The Edwardian-Georgian writer Flora Thompson is much better known as a chronicler of rural life than she is as a poet. Her only volume of poetry, Bog-Myrtle and Peat (1921), brought her brief renown, but her success as a poet was not sustained. Instead, she developed her prose writing about rural life, enjoying considerable success with the trilogy Lark Rise To Candleford (1939-1943) in the last years of her life.

Flora Jane Timms was born at Juniper Hill (called Lark Rise in Lark Rise To Candleford), Oxfordshire, on 5 December 1876 to Albert and Emma (Dibber) Timms. A stonemason, who had had aspirations to become a sculptor, Albert Timms was originally from Oxford, where his family had been publicans. Emma Timms was a local woman who had been a nursemaid. Their lives are sensitively described in Lark Rise (1939), the first volume of the trilogy, in which Flora appears as Laura. The...