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Harold John Massingham

Lark Rise to Candleford

Published by Good Press, 2021

goodpress@okpublishing.info

EAN 4066338092243

Table of Contents

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Introduction to the trilogy by H. J. MASSINGHAM

[Pg v]

INTRODUCTION

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By absolute values, a true writer can never be other than what he is. But in our imperfect world his living light will only shine among men if it appears at precisely the right time. If it does so appear, it is not merely good luck, because the truth should also possess a super-sensitive probe (like the woodcock's bill) for testing the subsoil of what it works on. This is something very different from what is called 'appealing to the popular imagination'. Flora Thompson possesses the attributes both of sympathetic presentation and literary power to such a degree of quality and beauty that her claims upon posterity can hardly be questioned. Her lovers guessed it when her three memorial volumes, Lark Rise, Over to Candleford, and Candleford Green, were published separately; now that they form a trilogy, each part illuminating and reflecting the others in a delicate interplay, the time of speculation is over. This wholeness, they will say, is a triune achievement: a triumph of evocation in the resurrecting of an age that, being transitional, was the most difficult to catch as it flew; another in diversity of rural portraiture engagingly blended with autobiography; and the last in the overtones and implications of a set of values which is the author's 'message'.

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