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It has been Flora Thompson's mission to represent this great tragic epic obliquely, and by the medium of humdrum but highly individualized country people living their ordinary lives in their own homes. As I said at the opening of this Introduction, she has conveyed it at just the right time—namely, when the triumphs of industrial progress are beginning to be seen for what they are. Or, as a recent correspondent to The Times expressed it, 'peace and beauty must inevitably give way to progress'. She has conveyed this profound tragedy through so delicate a mastery, with so beguiling an air and by so tender an elegy, that what she has to tell is 'felt along the heart' rather than as a spectacular eclipse. I regard this as an achievement in literature that will outlive her own life. Or, as the gipsy said who told Laura's fortune at Candleford Green—'You are going to be loved by people you've never seen and never will see.'

H. J. MASSINGHAM

Reddings, Long Crendon, Bucks.

August 1944

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