Flora Thompson

FT , who wrote in the early to mid twentieth century, had limited education and lived outside the literary mainstream. She had little success as a poet or novelist, but built herself a career as a journalist. She wrote about the countryside (as well as about books), and eventually achieved fame as a memoirist or autobiographer. Both her periodical essays and her memoirs show her skill in re-creating the village life of a past generation. She combines toughness in her presentation of the poverty and hardship of rural lives, and lyricism in her rendering of the natural environment and of lived folk culture.