Heatherley: The Lost Sequel to "Lark Rise to Candleford"

When the young Flora Thompson took up her duties at Grayshott post-office in 1898, she found to her amazement that her customers included Arthur Conan Doyle and George Bernard Shaw. The neighbouring settlement of Hindhead had attracted many eminent Victorians to take up residence, and the telegraph machine at Grayshott which Flora was employed to operate was their prime means of communication to the outside world. In "Heatherley", she tells us that as a result of meeting these famous authors she 'destroyed her own scraps of writing, saying to herself as they smouldered to tinder that that was the end of a foolish idea.' Fortunately it did not stop her altogether, and from the perspective of some forty-five years after the events described, Flora Thompson remembers with her usual clarity back to a time when bicycles and Kodak cameras were just becoming popular, and she herself was guilty of crossing the strict conventions of propriety at the end of the nineteenth century. With this book, Flora picks up the story of her life a year after she left 'Candleford Green' and her native Oxfordshire to arrive in 'heathery' Hampshire. Here she was to stay, off and on, for the next 30 years of her life. But although she completed the typescript of this sequel to 'Lark Rise to Candleford', Flora never published it. Instead, many years later, it was included in a posthumous collection of her writings by Margaret Lane entitled 'A Country Calendar and other works' - which has been out of print now for some years. In this new edition, celebrating the centenary of her arrival in Grayshott, we have reviewed Flora's original typescript and added illustrations and historical notes as well as some fresh material found in her archives, now in the University of Texas. Introduction by Anne Mallinson of Selborne; chapter illustrations by Hester Whittle; historical notes by John Owen Smith.