In the wake of the popular TV adaptation of her trilogy of 19th-century Oxfordshire rural life, another biography of Flora Thompson was to be expected.

Mabey, author of several countryside living books, sub-titles his study The Life of Flora Thompson and the creation of Lark Rise to Candleford.

He readily acknowledges a debt to earlier biographies, including The World of Flora Thompson Revisited by Oxfordshire’s Christine Bloxham, in which another local historian, David Watts of Bicester, had an input. Mabey charts her life from humble beginnings in Juniper Hill and Cottisford on the Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire borderlands to working at Fringford post office (the business was coupled with a forge) and on to her career in the postal service in Grayshott, Hampshire. For much of this time Flora was writing short stories and articles for magazines and, Mabey suggests, was influenced by Gilbert White’s Natural History of Selborne, the village being close to Grayshott. Jane Austen’s home at Chawton was not too far away either.

Mabey also hints that Flora was over-awed by the presence in her post office of such literary giants as Bernard Shaw and Conan Doyle, who lived nearby and were part of what was called the Hilltop Writers.

A big influence on Flora was the Scots poet Ronald Campbell McFie, who gave her much encouragement.

Later, when Flora sent Oxford University Press the manuscript of what was to be the first volume of Lark Rise to Candleford, she was supported by OUP’s Geoffrey Cumberlege. He pressed Flora to complete her third volume, although she was ill and affected by the loss of her son Peter during the Second World War.

Was it fact or fiction? Mabey defends her against criticism caused by the fact that the trilogy was labelled autobiography because OUP did not handle fiction.

One aspect that Mabey does not touch on is Flora’s younger sister Betty, who published a children’s story before Flora was in print.

It is a pity, too, that the recent publication of Betty’s own memoirs More Tales from Lark Rise probably came out too late for consideration by Mabey.

Mabey’s study is valuable for its perceptions of a modest writer. Those wanting to learn more about Flora could turn to previous biographies plus the Watts and Bloxham volumes Flora Thompson’s Country and The Real Lark Rise Parish by Ted and Joan Flaxman, who live in Flora’s old school, plus Martin Greenwood’s In Flora’s Footsteps.