Flora Thompson
Flora Jane Thompson (née Timms; 5 December 1876 – 21 May 1947) was an English novelist and poet best known for her semi-autobiographical trilogy about the English countryside, Lark Rise to Candleford.
Also recorded as Flora Jane Timms · Flora Jane Thompson · Flora (June) Thompson
Flora Thompson
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- Name
- Flora Thompson
- Birth Name
- Flora Jane Timms
- Born
- 5 December 1876
- Birthplace
- Juniper Hill, Oxfordshire, England
- Died
- 21 May 1947
- Place of death
- Brixham, Devon, England
- Known for
- Author and poet
- Spouse
- John William Thompson
- Nationality
- United Kingdom
- Occupation
- poet · writer · postmaster · novelist · essayist
- Fields
- poetry · essay
- Languages
- English
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Documentary connections
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Documentary evidence
Documentary basis
Authority files
wikidata · Q542835 · wikipedia · Flora Thompson
VALÉORINE Encyclopedia
The documentary record
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Institutions cited
Bibliothèque nationale de France · Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
Complete reading chain (JSON)In this article
Key facts
Key facts
• Name — Flora Thompson • Birth Name — Flora Jane Timms • Born — 5 December 1876 • Birthplace — Juniper Hill, Oxfordshire, England • Died — 21 May 1947 • Place of death — Brixham, Devon, England • Resting Place — Longcross Cemetery, Dartmouth, Devon, England • Known for — Author and poet • Employer — Post office • Notable Works — Lark Rise to Candleford • Spouse — John William Thompson • Children — 3
Documentary record
Flora Thompson (5 December 1876 – 21 May 1947) is described as a writer in the authority records of the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. Flora Thompson was born in Juniper Hill, United Kingdom (5 December 1876) and died in Brixham, United Kingdom (21 May 1947).
Early life and family
Early life and family
Thompson was born Flora Jane Timms in Juniper Hill in northeast Oxfordshire, the eldest child of Albert and Emma Timms, a stonemason and nursemaid respectively. Albert and Emma had twelve children, but only six survived childhood. One of her younger sisters was Betty Timms, best known for her children's book The Little Grey Men of the Moor. The young Flora's early education was at the parish school in the village of Cottisford where she was described as 'altogether her father's child'. In 1891, at the age of 14, Flora moved to take up a position as counter clerk at the post office in Fringford, a village about 4 mi northeast of Bicester, under the tutelage of the postmistress, Mrs Kezia Whitton. She later served at various other post offices, including offices at Grayshott, Yateley, and Winton in Bournemouth. In 1903 she married John William Thompson, a post office clerk and telegraphist from the Isle of Wight, at Twickenham Parish Church, after which they moved to Bournemouth where they had a daughter, Winifred Grace (1903), and a son, Henry Basil (1909). In 1916 they moved to Liphook where their second son Peter Redmond was born (1918). Thompson's favourite brother, Edwin, was killed near Ypres in 1916.
Death
Death
The death of Thompson's younger son during the Second World War affected her deeply and overshadowed her final years. She died in 1947 of a heart attack in Brixham, and is buried at Longcross Cemetery, Dartmouth, Devon.
Verse
Verse
• Bog Myrtle and Peat (1921)
Novels
Novels
• Lark Rise (1939) • Over to Candleford (1941) • Candleford Green (1943) • Lark Rise to Candleford (1945, the above three novels published as a trilogy) • Still Glides the Stream (1948, published posthumously) • Heatherley (1944, published posthumously first in A Country Calendar 1979 along with some Peverel Papers and some poems; then as single volume in 1998) • Gates of Eden (serialised in The Peverel Monthly edited by Thompson in the late 1920s but never published as a separate volume) • Dashpers (unfinished, unpublished novel)
Nature articles
Nature articles
• The Peverel Papers (Abridged version published 1986; Complete version published 2008)
Identity and origins
Identity and origins
The authorities additionally record the headings Flora Jane Timms, Flora Jane Thompson and Flora (June) Thompson. Her recorded language was English.
Identity
Identity
Flora Thompson is recorded as poet, writer, postmaster, novelist and essayist.
Flora Thompson
Dcs57
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 2 entries
1876
Flora Thompson was born in 1876 at Juniper Hill.
1947
Flora Thompson died in 1947 at Brixham.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
Juniper Hill.
Birth place
Brixham.
Death place
Literary output
A self-taught and a largely self-educated writer, Thompson was thinking, as early as 1922, about writing of her childhood. In 1911 she had won an essay competition in The Ladies Companion for a 300-word essay about Jane Austen. Her younger sister, Ethel Elizabeth 'Betty' Timms shared her love of writing, and Betty's success with a children's book, 'The Little Grey Men of the Moor', published in 1926, encouraged Flora to write her books. She later wrote extensively, publishing short stories and magazine and newspaper articles. She was also a keen self-taught naturalist; many of her nature articles were anthologised in 1986. In 1938 Thompson sent some essays on her country childhood to Oxford University Press. They were accepted and published in three separate volumes, Lark Rise (1939), Over to Candleford (1941), and Candleford Green (1943). In 1945 the books were republished as a trilogy under the title Lark Rise to Candleford. The trilogy is a lightly disguised story of the author's own youth, describing life in a hamlet, a village, and a country town in the 1880s. Two of Thompson's later lesser-known works were published posthumously: Heatherley, recounting her time in the post office at Grayshott at the turn of the 20th century when several of her lifelong interests took shape, the longing for education and culture and the desire to become a writer; and her last book Still Glides the Stream.
Critical reception
H. J. Massingham said of Thompson in 1944, "...she possesses the attributes both of sympathetic presentation and literary power to such a degree that her claims can hardly be questioned". Thompson's essays have been said to reveal an impressive knowledge of English literature and a gift for writing intelligent but accessible prose for a general audience. She approached novel writing as an artistic process and her descriptions of nature are notably poetic. Thompson's biographer, Gillian Lindsay, says, "...this girl whose elementary education was not enough to allow her to take a Civil Service examination, had written a classic book, a piece of enduring literature," while Shuckburgh considers that it was her 'passion and control' that made Thompson such a good writer. Her entry in the ODNB says of the trilogy that "Few works better or more elegantly capture the decay of Victorian agrarian England". Thompson's trilogy has been widely used as a primary source for the social history of the period, although some historians have expressed reservations as to its validity for that purpose.
Literature
Literature
Literature
Thompson, Flora Jane (1876–1947), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2018
Scholarly footprint
Literature
Scholarly footprint
A count of publications is evidence of attention, not of standing, and is given here only as a measure.
Text attribution
Licensing
Text attribution
Part of the biographical narrative on this page reuses licensed material. Its origin, revision and licence are recorded here.
The biographical narrative on this page is based on the Wikipedia article Flora Thompson, revision 1369642809 (EN edition), by its contributors. VALÉORINE has edited that text and built its own documentary record around it. The reused material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, and this page's reuse of it is offered under the same licence. Everything else on this page — the chronology, the holdings, the evidence, the plates and the connections — is VALÉORINE's own record. Sources and licences.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Lindsay, Gillian. Thompson, Flora Jane (1876–1947). 2004. 10.1093/ref:odnb/38059.
- 2.Census Returns of England and Wales, 1911. Kew, Surrey, England: The National Archives of the UK, Class: RG14; Piece: 8177; Schedule Number: 134.
- 3.Timms, Betty, More Tales from Lark Rise, The Wychwood Press, Charlbury 2012; .
- 4.Lindsay, 2007, page not cited
- 5.United Kingdom Census 1881, parish of Fringford
- 6.Lark Rise to Candleford and Flora Thompson's years in Winton. winton.infoflash.co.uk.
- 7.Dorset Magazine. In the Footsteps of Flora Thompson. 1983.
- 8.Ennever family history & ancestry: Flora Jane Thompson (née Timms), authoress.
- 9.Profile, cwgc.org; accessed 18 February 2016.
- 10.Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Casualty Details.
- 11.Lindsay, Gillian The Story of the Lark Rise Writer Robert Hale Ltd, 1990;
- 12.Winton Community Forum: Flora Thompson
- 13.Flora Thompson exhibition has this on display. Buckingham Old Gaol.
- 14.Introduction, The Peverel Papers - A yearbook of the countryside ed. Julian Shuckburgh, Century Hutchinson London 1986
- 15.Massingham H.J. (1944), Lark Rise to Candleford, Penguin Books, London 1973,
- 16.Hoffman, Ruth Collette. Without Education or Encouragement - The Literary Legacy of Flora Thompson, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, Madison, 2009;
- 17.Lindsay, Gillian The Story of the Lark Rise Writer - Robert Hale Ltd, 1990
- 18.Thompson, Flora. The Peveral Papers. John Owen Smith. 2008. 978-1-873855-57-7.
Bibliography printed in the source article · 1
- Lindsay, Gillian. Flora Thompson, the story of the 'Lark Rise' writer. John Owen Smith. 30. 2007. 978-1-873855-53-9.
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
reference work
Wikidata, structured authority record Q542835: Flora ThompsonWikimedia Foundation
Secondary witnessreference work
Secondary witness
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 15 August 2026.
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