A Short Story of Flora Thompson
COUNTRY LIVING
LAR OMPSO CAN K RISE N: DLE T FOR O D
TH FLO RA
WH THE GHT EELWR ’S S I HO P
GEO R STU GE RT
October 27th, 2008
e-mail: alexandra_zielinska@mac.com
Who was She?
A SHORT STORY OF FLORA JANE THOMPSON (1876-1947)
Awriter, she was born in Juniper Hill, a hamlet in north-east Oxfordshire, on 5 December 1876, the eldest child in the family of four daughters and two sons of Albert Timms, a stonemason, originally from Buckingham, and his wife Emma, a nursemaid, daughter of John Dibber from Stoke Lyne, an 'eggler', who took his pony and cart around local farms, collecting eggs and selling them in the market town. Her favourite brother Edwin, born in 1879, was to die in 1916 during the battle of the Somme. After elementary education at the village school in Cottisford she became, at the age of fourteen, an unofficial post-office counter clerk in the Oxfordshire village of Fringford. Until her marriage in 1903 she worked in post offices in Buckinghamshire, Essex, and Hampshire. In 1911 she won a magazine essay competition and went on to write short stories, newspaper articles, and during the 1920s two long series of articles for the Catholic Fireside magazine. In alternate months she wrote nature articles and literary pieces. She was a
Flora Thompson
dedicated if self-taught naturalist. An anthology of her nature articles called The Peverel Papers was published in 1986. The literary articles were the result of her home study of literature-she had grown up during the establishment of the free library system in Britain, which she used extensively to supplement her elementary education. Her first published book was Bog Myrtle and Peat (1921), a volume of poems which she was persuaded to
-1-
COUNTRY LIVING!
PAGE
2
Flora and her sisters Flora and her husband John
submit for publication by her friend and literary mentor Dr Ronald Campbell Macfie. In 1938 she sent essays on her country childhood to the Oxford University
LAR OMPSO CAN K RISE N: DLE T FOR O D
TH FLO RA
WH THE GHT EELWR ’S S I HO P
GEO R STU GE RT
October 27th, 2008
e-mail: alexandra_zielinska@mac.com
Who was She?
A SHORT STORY OF FLORA JANE THOMPSON (1876-1947)
Awriter, she was born in Juniper Hill, a hamlet in north-east Oxfordshire, on 5 December 1876, the eldest child in the family of four daughters and two sons of Albert Timms, a stonemason, originally from Buckingham, and his wife Emma, a nursemaid, daughter of John Dibber from Stoke Lyne, an 'eggler', who took his pony and cart around local farms, collecting eggs and selling them in the market town. Her favourite brother Edwin, born in 1879, was to die in 1916 during the battle of the Somme. After elementary education at the village school in Cottisford she became, at the age of fourteen, an unofficial post-office counter clerk in the Oxfordshire village of Fringford. Until her marriage in 1903 she worked in post offices in Buckinghamshire, Essex, and Hampshire. In 1911 she won a magazine essay competition and went on to write short stories, newspaper articles, and during the 1920s two long series of articles for the Catholic Fireside magazine. In alternate months she wrote nature articles and literary pieces. She was a
Flora Thompson
dedicated if self-taught naturalist. An anthology of her nature articles called The Peverel Papers was published in 1986. The literary articles were the result of her home study of literature-she had grown up during the establishment of the free library system in Britain, which she used extensively to supplement her elementary education. Her first published book was Bog Myrtle and Peat (1921), a volume of poems which she was persuaded to
-1-
COUNTRY LIVING!
PAGE
2
Flora and her sisters Flora and her husband John
submit for publication by her friend and literary mentor Dr Ronald Campbell Macfie. In 1938 she sent essays on her country childhood to the Oxford University