Over to Candleford

Lark Rise to Candleford #2

by Flora Thompson

In the little hamlet of Lark Rise times are changing and Laura is growing up. Although she must attend the nearby village school, she would far rather read and make up stories in her head. Real-life excitement comes, however, when she and her beloved younger brother Edmund are allowed to walk on their own to the grand market town of Candleford to stay with their relatives one summer. There, Laura discovers the joys of the shops, the ways of boy-talk with her cousins and the secret world of 'Bookworms Ltd' with her Uncle Tom, before an offer arrives that will determine her future. A story of friendships, rivalries and a young girl finding her place in the world, this is the second part of Flora Thompson's endearing Lark Rise to Candleford trilogy on country life, which evokes the passage from childhood to adolescence and a society on the cusp of transformation.

Genres: Classics, Historical Fiction, Fiction, Historical, British Literature, Biography Memoir, Victorian

112 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1941

About the author

Flora Jane Thompson (5 December 1876 – 21 May 1947) was an English novelist and poet famous for her semi-autobiographical trilogy about the English countryside, Lark Rise to Candleford.

Flora benefited from good access to books when the public library opened in Winton, in 1907. Not long after, in 1911, she won an essay competition in The Ladies Companion for a 300-word essay about Jane Austen.[6] She later wrote extensively, publishing short stories and magazine and newspaper articles. She was a keen self-taught naturalist and many of her nature articles were anthologised in 1986.

Her most famous works are the Lark Rise to Candleford trilogy, which she sent as essays to Oxford University Press in 1938 and which were published soon after. She wrote a sequel Heatherley which was published posthumously. The books are a fictionalised, if autobiographical, social history of rural English life in the late 19th and early 20th century and are now considered minor classics.

Reviews

[Chrissie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This, Over to Candleford, the second book in the Lark Rise to Candleford Trilogy, is quite different from the first book of the trilogy. Of the two, I would have to say that the first, Lark Rise, is more to my taste. Nevertheless, I enjoyed both very much although for different reasons.

Please read my review of Lark Rise, so I do not have to repeat what is said there: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

The books are categorized as semi-autobiographical fiction—fiction because names are changed and dialogues are invented.

Laura, the fictional Flora, takes center stage in the second book. Now older, she is in school and spends her summers with relatives in the nearby market town, Candleford, eight miles away. In reality the, fictitious Candleford is Buckingham of Buckinghamshire. Switching from the hamlet (Lark Rise, i.e. Juniper Hill) where she lives to the town she visits, the author compares the old customs and the new trends arising in the two.

While the first book reads as documentation of social history, this one reads much more as historical fiction. It has more of a plot—we follow Laura and her daily experiences. We watch Laura as she grows and matures. What is delivered is a coming-of-age story. Descriptions of life in the Victorian era are in both book,s but they play a less prominent role in the second.

Character portrayal comes to the fore in the second book. Laura, her younger brother, Edmund, and the children’s mother are particularly well drawn. Each is different, one from the other. When you close the book, you feel as if you know them. You understand the relationships between them. You know who they are and why they interact as they do. You have watched as Laura’s and Edmund’s personalities have taken shape. The reader is given a full picture of the three.

Laura, telling the tale as an adult, throws in details pertaining to what happens to each in the future. The mix of information covering the past, the present and the future is skillfully interwoven.

The humor found in the first book is here too. It is an important element. Without the humor the book would not be what it is; it would be pedestrian. Subtle ironic humor is found on every page.

The relationship between mother and daughter at the book’s end shows the extent to which Laura has matured. This struck a chord for me. It is one of the reasons why I have given the book four stars.

Karen Cass narrates all three of the trilogy’s books. Her performance here is as good as in the first. Again, five stars for the audiobook narration. It is a delight when a really good book is also well read.

This story is cuter than the first and will appeal to young adults curious to know more about the Victorian era. A large quantity of the historical facts presented relate to children.

*************


Lark Rise to Candleford Trilogy
1.Lark Rise (published 1939) 4 stars
2.Over to Candleford (published 1941) 4 stars
3.Candleford Green (published 1943) 4 stars

In 1945 republished by Oxford University Press in one volume under the title:
Lark Rise to Candleford: A Trilogy

[Kavita · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this second part of the series, Thompson describes how Laura and Edmund visit their cousins in Candleford for the summer. Life is completely different in the small town than in their hamlet and Laura is completely smitten by the kind of freedom and resources Candleford afforded her cousins on a regular basis.

This is where she gets into reading voraciously, often reading to her Uncle Tom at his workshop. She gets to meet all kinds of interesting people at this shop, making lasting memories in her life. She notes that in the town at her slightly better off relations, the culture was different. Girls were not supposed to serve the boys - instead boys were told to make do without and take care of the girls. I found it to be an interesting change between poor and what would technically be middle-class.

But Laura is also growing up and just reading books is not going to get her a career. Her mother earmarked her for a nursing career, but they both realise that she was not cut out for it. While she provided free babysitting to the children her mother continuously popped out, her not being obsessed with babies at the age of fourteen was apparently a fault for which she is berated by her mother.🙄 Luckily, fate intervenes and she gets another job more suited - and definitely more fun - for a fourteen year old.

Poor Edmund is going to buy it in the First World War, and there is some foreshadowing to that. He is earmarked to be a carpenter - a trade the boy loathed. He wanted to travel and for people from his class, the only way to do that was to join the army. But his parents would hear not a word of this because soldiers were drunkards and could not hold down a job when they quit the army.

The book ends with Laura setting off to Candleford to start her new job as a postmistress. Looking forward to reading about her new experiences in the 3rd book! All in all, a very interesting look at normal people's lives in the Victorian era.

[Mela · Rating 4 out of 5]

This part had a bit more of a plot structure. But still, it was not enough to make a proper novel. Nonetheless, I loved the reminiscences of be-gone times.

More in the review of the whole trilogy.

[Trace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a delightful series. I'm listening to the Audible version while going for walks and hikes.

[Abbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

“A wave of pure happiness pervaded her being, and, although it soon receded, it carried away with it her burden of care. Her first reaction was to laugh aloud at herself. What a fool she had been to make so much of so little. There must be thousands like her who could see no place for themselves in the world, and here she had been, fretting herself and worrying others as if her case were unique. And, deeper down, beneath the surface of her being, was the feeling, rather than the knowledge, that her life's deepest joys would be found in such scenes as this.”

[Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now that I know there's no real story here, this is a comforting sort of evening read. "Laura", the rather 2-dimensional main character, has more to do with the actual telling as she finally makes it to Candleford, which is only about 8 miles distant...but when you go on foot, that's a long way. She visits her cousins, whose family is considerably more well-to-do than her own, and jumps from six to eight to fourteen in a very few pages. She spends time with her cousins whenever her own mother is about to give birth, which Mum somehow manages to plan so that it's summertime. The first visit is a week or two, the succeeding ones seem to occupy the whole summer, which surprised me...wouldn't Mum want her at home as an unpaid babyminder, as the family continues to grow? However, in many Victorian-childhood memoirs, it seems always to be summer when anything pleasant happens. Apparently Mum is unimpressed with her childminding skills (like me, Laura prefers books to babies any day of the week) and tells her she'll never make the nanny Mum had dreamed she'd be, which causes Laura to have a depressive crisis, as she knows she's expected to be out and earning at the end of her last year of school, but she's terrible at needlework and there's nothing more the village schoolmarm can teach her.

Rather unbelievably the depression vanishes like magic, never to return, when Laura stands by a local stream and observes the beauty of the countryside around her. I think finding the possibility of becoming Candleford's postmistress had rather more to do with that.

A safe, cosy little bedtime read. I could have sworn I had read this in the past, but if I did it made no impression at all. On to vol 3, which may possibly be the one I had access to in the 80s.

[Elyse Welles · Rating 4 out of 5]

This wonderful book is certainly superior to its predecessor. I feel like if Thompson had published today, most of “Lark Rise” (the first in the trilogy) would be in an appendix or published separately as a history. This book is much more of a novel, with a linear story about Laura’s later childhood. The backdrop, established throughout and in “Lark Rise”, is enhanced with the extension to Candleford. Laura’s Uncle Tom is a fascinating character missing from the show, and Ms. Lane is personified in a more rounded perspective than the show explains. For fans of the show, like myself, this will be even more enjoyable as it’s like bonus content for many great characters.

[Leslie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5* This second book in the trilogy is clearly actually the second volume of a single work as even the chapter numbering is continued from Lark Rise! I found this volume much more interesting as it focused more on Laura Timmins and her family. Laura and her brother Edmund get a chance to visit the market town of Candleford (~8 miles distant from their home in Lark Rise) and meet various relatives and family friends. While it still contained plenty of vignettes, it had more of a plot and therefore I found it more engaging.

For anyone reading this review who, like me, has been introduced to these books through the BBC/PBS TV adaptation "Lark Rise to Candleford" I will just mention that so far we haven't gotten to the beginning of that show! At the very end of this volume, Laura has just been offered the position with Dorcas Lane in the Candleford Green post office. She is 14 and is one of the oldest children still in school as most of her classmates have already left in order to work.

[Manuel Alfonseca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Second part of the famous trilogy (Lark Rise to Candleford), where the author continues telling reminiscences about her childhood in a small English hamlet, and their visits and holidays spent with her cousins in Candleford, a small town near their hamlet.

Just about the end, this part of her life comes to an end when she leaves Lark Rise to work in the Post Office of Candleford under the supervision of Dorcas Lane, Post Office manager and friend of her mother.

[Suzanne Noakes · Rating 4 out of 5]

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[Nicky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Over to Candleford is, like Lark Rise, not so much about plot as about village life in Flora Thompson's childhood. I've tagged it as non-fiction, though I gather there's some element of fictionalisation... It's very much like the first book: idealised country life, the simple pleasures, etc, etc.

Unlike Lark Rise, I think there's more about character here -- more of a sense of the people around Laura, and more of a sense of Laura herself. I'd hesitate to call it a plot, but she is beginning to grow up and to have more experiences of the world. I'm wondering whether the third book, Candleford Green, will actually have a plot, since someone mentioned to me it's mostly what the tv series, Lark Rise to Candleford, is based on.

There's still something enchanting about the way all the details are giving that doesn't make it tiresome at all to read, even though nothing's happening. The little details of people made me like it more than I liked Lark Rise.

[Linda K · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been reading this in tandem with watching episodes of the BBC series. The book is full of endearing scenes of village life for Laura and her family in the hamlet of 1880's Lark Rise, as well as the nearby town of Candleford.

I discovered that the expression "a pretty kettle of fish" comes from the fact of having a lovely oval pan used for cooking fish, NOT that the fish were pretty!

We meet Dorcus Lane, postmistress of the Candleford Post Office who offers Laura the opportunity to work for her there as an apprentice.

This book serves as a sweet record of a time of simple village life that has long since passed but should be remembered. A time when families enjoyed each day despite how little they sometimes had.

[Elline Pelline]

I just couldn't keep myself from continue the trilogy. The second book was as charming as the first! It feels like I've spent the last hours in Lark Rise and Candleford... How can I ever leave?

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Over to Candleford, the second of the three books that comprise Flora Thompson’s Lark Rise to Candleford trilogy, is a transitional book in two ways.

It is a transitional period in the life of Laura, the barely-veiled representation of Flora Thompson, whose observations make up the trilogy. Laura was a child in Lark Rise, and will be an adult in Candleford Green. Here she is an adolescent making the journey from childhood to adulthood.

One of the chapters here is called ‘Growing Pains’. Thompson describes her sense of feeling displaced by the birth of new siblings, who require more attention than her, and tells us of her mother’s ambitions for Laura’s future, some of those ambitions doomed to disappointment.

This is also the book that acts as a transition in Laura’s journey from Lark Hill to Candleford. Neither place name is real incidentally, as Thompson has renamed and perhaps combined various locales to make up her book.

We might assume that the book describes Laura moving from one place to another. In fact this only happens in the final chapter, which is also the briefest one in the book. Laura’s family remains firmly in Lark Hill, and the book begins with more descriptions of life there.

The title refers rather to the visits that Laura and her family make to relatives who live in Candleford. Lark Hill is a small hamlet where everyone knows each other’s business, and the neighbours cannot afford to fall out with each other because they rely on one another so much, if only for social interaction.

Not that the people of Lark Hill are especially soft or charitable. They are not without kindness, but they feel that people should toughen up, and manage by themselves. This applies in the relations that parents have with their children. The children should eat what food is in front of them, and tears will meet with little sympathy. The parents are loving, but they have a tougher idea of how they should behave as parents.

Even today there may be many people reading Thompson, and wishing that we still had the same basic attitude – one where there is no time for manic depression or talking about feelings or tiptoeing around people who are different.

Personally I prefer life as it is today, where we are allowed to be gentler and more empathic. I would not want a rigidly conformist society where the locals speak in proverbs and clichés, rather than thinking for themselves.

Candleford offers a glimpse of the world to come. Already the world of Lark Hill is starting to move away. Soon the blacksmiths will have to learn to be car mechanics, and bicycles will cease to seem weird and comical. We are seeing the beginnings of a new age of greater mobility and change.

In Candleford, we see a more developed settlement, where people live in greater prosperity, and parents mollycoddle their children – at least compared to Laura’s household. Life is more relaxed and informal.

It is still a society that seems rigid by our standards. One of Laura’s uncles is religious and a strict adherent of temperance, even to the point where he is unwilling to employ workers who drink.

Candleford also appears to be a more conservative world than Lark Hill. Laura’s father is a Liberal, an admirer of Gladstone, and a supporter of Home Rule for Ireland. This causes him to get into furious arguments with her uncle, whose opinion of the Irish is rather more bigoted.

Still this is the world into which Laura is about to be absorbed in the next book in the series. Strictly speaking Candleford Green is not yet a part of Candleford, and exists on the outskirts, but it will soon be absorbed.

It will be interesting to see how Laura manages in this new environment, and how it changes her outlook on life to be away from Lark Hill. Of interest will be her new employer, a woman who runs a post office and a blacksmiths, in which she worked. This makes her a curious figure, a more modern woman who reads science books, and is familiar with Darwin.

Will Laura take on more of her employer’s views, or those of her uncle? I look forward to finding out.

Over to Candleford is shorter and less wide-ranging in its concerns than Lark Hill, the first book in the series. Nonetheless it is once more absorbing, and a fascinating glimpse into a long-lost world.

I am not sure how a book that describes the lives of local rural people in the 1880s and 1890s without including any dramatic events can be so interesting. It is a testament to Flora Thompson’s gift as a writer that she is never dull.

[Brian E Reynolds · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the second of Flora Thompson’s three semi-autobiographical novellas that have been most often read in one volume as Lark Rise to Candleford . The first novella had felt like a collection of essays on life during the 1880s in the Oxfordshire hamlet that the titled hamlet Lark Rise was based on. While the author fictionalized herself as the young girl Laura, she spent much more time describing general life processes in Lark Rise than on events in Laura’s life. I ended my review of that novella stating that “ I do hope to find some storytelling and character development in the next two novellas of the trilogy which will present life as Laurie moves from the hamlet of Lark Rise to the village of Candleford.”
Well, I’m happy to report that I did find more storytelling and development in this novella. Laura starts having experiences and personal interactions that get described in a chapter rather than a page. While Thompson start the book with several chapters that continued her practice of focusing on life processes in the town than in any storytelling, at least this time most of the life process depictions involved Laura’s family rather than generalizations.
While this book was an improvement from the essay-like Lark Rise, I will still rate it as 3.3 stars rounded to 3 stars. I enjoyed the storytelling but it’s not engaging enough to warrant 4 stars at this point in the trilogy. But I do look forward to reading the third volume, Candlewood Green, as I am now invested in finding out how Laura’s life progresses.

[Plum · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really loved learning about the life of the time in which the book was set, this being more about the people than the setting, where the first book was more about the setting than the people. Laura is a little older and spends much of the book with her family in Candleford, while her mother has more babies, which sounds strange written thus, but the book is set over a longer period of time, and the focus seems to really be the times spent in Candleford. I am now going to start the next book to find out about the early working life of Laura.

Racism warning: a game that Laura plays has an extraordinarily racist name. One paragraph.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved "Lark Rise," the first book in this autobiographical trilogy, as it foregrounded the titular hamlet instead of the protagonist, Laura, giving us a rich and complicated look at village life near the end of the 20th century. The second book is more of a companion piece than a sequel, as it focuses very closely on Laura. We're left with a very readable, but conventional, story of a young girl growing up in a small village, struggling to find her place in life. Conflicts with parents, school bullies, etc. Thompson is an excellent writer, and I enjoyed reading the book (and will continue to volume 3), but book 2 just didn't pack the punch of its predecessor.

[Eileen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another delightful trip to the past, not that it was a life free from trouble and sorrow of all sorts for Laura's family or herself. In this part of the trilogy of novels, Laura's world widens and she suffers the pain of not knowing what she will do in her life and what she is skilled enough to do well. In her lyrical, simple way, she touches on how much one's simple world has a great capacity to nourish the spirit and build courage and the willingness to face uncertainty even with some joy. Looking forward to the last book in the trilogy, Candleford Green.

[Rich Farrell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This second book in the trilogy touches on social class and Laura feeling as a misfit because of her love of reading and academia in her working class family and community. Like the first, this book is a bit darker than the television series but also more real as the struggles seem more difficult to overcome. Unlike the first book, there are more anecdotes than descriptions in this one.

[A N · Rating 4 out of 5]

A semi-biography of the author set in a imaginary hamlet, describing the life of rulal life in the late 1880's.
I was recommend this book by an lady about 40 odd years ago, and I am delighted to finally come across with this book.

[LauraT · Rating 3 out of 5]

It improves with the writing: compared to the first part of the trilogy, this one has a much more structured plot, following Laura more closely. Now I want to see where she is going to finish her story, in this rural England of almost two centuries ago!!!

[Judith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't think I enjoyed this as much as the first one, but it was still pretty fun and relaxing!

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really delightful as a gentle, easy listening audiobook.

[Elisa Nolf · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written but I found it quite dull overall. Not enough narrative story for me.

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delightful.

[Anna Smirnova · Rating 5 out of 5]

An enchanting book. I would love to have more. Reading about Lora’s life is so gripping for some reason.

[SusanwithaGoodBook · Rating 3 out of 5]

see book 1

[Shiloah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the TV series. I’ve been meaning to read them for years! They’re on Audible now so I listened. They were wonderful—but different! The show is “based” on the books. Only some people are in them. The books are based on the author’s life in turn-of-the-century England so her first goal was to make an history of this time as she missed it, come the 1930s, and valued what she had in her childhood. The first book is mostly a history of the times—fascinating too. She even went down a long rabbit trail of the common names and nicknames many had! The second and third were more storylines compared to the first. The first had some sporadically interspersed with the history. It was a great experience!

[Cecily · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fun quick read that was a delicious cross between Laura Ingalls Wilder and L.M. Montgomery. I relished every minute. Over to Candleford is a bit more novel in form than Lark Rise was, and made that much more interesting, though I loved Lark Rise. This book focuses on Laura's school years including her summer visits to her aunt and uncle in Candleford and the continuation of her obsession with books and reading. We also meet Dorcas Lane in this book for the first time and I can't wait to read more about her in the final installment.

These books cover a time of drastic change in the world and even in tiny market towns like Candleford. It's so interesting to see it from this perspective and get a good look at the old ways that were eventually abandoned, though not forgotten. I feel lucky that someone thought to write it all down.

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book immensely. It has more of a story to it than the first book in the trilogy, "Lark Rise," but remains true to the spirit of capturing country life in England in the 1880s (moving into the 90s at the close of the book). Fans of the BBC series would still likely be startled by the book, however - it has none of the romance and intrigue of the series, and vignettes which last a paragraph or two in the book are blown up into full-blown, conflict-rich episodes and storylines in the BBC series. This book, however, is fascinating, touching, and full of insights into a world that no longer exists and the people who filled it.