The team
Angela Hicken
Madelaine - the book thief
Penny- Rose Ratcliffe
Rachel the editor- Jane the Archivist
Cordelia Gray- Friday Next
- Jacky Percival
Other teams
The Marlows, their maker and stealing a corner of Dorset Find!
The author Antonia Forest spent all of her writing career living in Bournemouth. Now I know Bournemouth isn't in Hampshire NOW, but it was until 1974, and as Antonia Forest wrote eleven of her 13 books before 1974 I am claiming her as a Hampshire writer.Antonia Forest is my favourite author of all time and if I could rescue only one book from my house if it was burning, it would be Falconer's Lure, Forest's third title in the Marlow family series.
Antonia Forest was born Patricia Giulia Kate Caulfield Rubinstein in London in 1915, but through family connections had associations with Bournemouth, finally moving there in 1938 to the house she would live in for the rest of her life. Forest died aged 88 in 2003.
Most of her books are concerned with the Marlow family, an ancient landed family whose patriarch is a Navy commander (later captain), and whose six daughters (out of eight children) all go to Kingscote School for Girls, a boarding school where all the Marlow books with "Term" in the title are set. The two sons of the family are in the Navy like their father, and so the Navy, and Portsmouth loom large in the Marlow's lives. Two of the Marlow titles are set during Elizabethan times with the central character, Nicholas, running away from home and joining Shakespeare's company. See http://www.maulu.demon.co.uk/AF/ for more bibliographical details
The majority of the books are set in a what must be admitted to be Dorset countryside and coastline, though in in response to the question 'Where are the books set?' Forest replied that she just put places in as she needed them. [Letter from AF 1982]
The work of Antonia Forest has shamefully been out of print for great stretches of time, and although dated and unfashionable in many ways this does not alter the wonderful, wonderful writing. Victor Watson, Assistant Director of Research at Homerton College Cambridge, has likened Forest to Jane Austen saying 'Like Austen her piece of ivory is small - a single family and its members' various friends; like her, her social range is limited to the modestly well-off upper middle class... like her, she has a brilliant ear for witty, intelligent and revealing dialogue; like her, she has a quietly ironic view of the shifty and devious compromises and backslidings of weaker characters; and, like her, her chief interest is the establishment of firmness of character, integrity and personal automomy in the imperfect world. ... And like Jane Austen she appears to tell her stories with such apparently casual ease that their subtleties can pass unnoticed.' [Reading Series Fiction - Victor Watson - Routledge 2000]
Most of the books have now been re-issued by http://www.ggbp.co.uk/ Girls Gone By though stocks come and go. (Girls Gone By are also re-issuing many Chalet School and other related titles)
Although the Marlow stories cover under two and a half years of the characters' lives, each book is set at the time of writing, which is spread over the much longer period between the late 1940s and early 1980s. The wide spacing of books in real time while the characters barely age has produced a dual timespan which readers need to accept with a willing suspense of disbelief. I have never had a problem with this dual timespan as the books are so strongly character led that the time setting simply isn't important.
I would urge everyone to hunt out copies of Forest's books. And I apologise to Dorset (or the unitary authority of Bournemouth for appropriating Antonia and her work for Hampshire in such a cavalier fashion!
14 August 2009 from Madelaine - the book thief
Finds
- And here is one we missed
- And, finally, one for Hallowe'en
- How did we miss this one?
- John Wyndham's Hampshire connection
- Reading the countryside
- New Milton's new Milton
- Heywood Sumner in South Gorley
- PG Wodehouse in Emsworth
- Walking In My Sleep
- Nicola Slade's Victorian Mysteries
- England's Lost Eden
- June Tate
- Bullington
- Speed The Plough: A Country Song
- A Hampshire scarecrow: Worzel Gummidge
- Queens Arms
- Haslar Hospital Memories
- Magical writing for children
- Inspired by the Tichborne Claimant
- Gypsy Girl Trilogy
- Rev. Gilbert White (1720-1793) and The Natural History of Selborne
- Coffee with Date and Walnut Loaf
- The Play Room
- Kipling's dislikes
- Deadman's Plack
- Netley Abbey Ruins
- Portsea Sagas
- Lilian Harry's Family Connections
- Crossing the Bar
- John Betjeman and Bevis Hillier
- Growing up in Portsmouth
- More Edward Thomas
- Two blokes and a shed
- In the shadow of the Cathedral
- Hampshire Days
- Mr Hardy Writes a Poem
- "Steep" is apt
- Thackeray in Fareham
- Forgotten Favourite?
- Daniel Clay's 'Broken'
- Pell and Tess
- Edward Thomas and Froxfield
- Betjeman explores hidden corners of Hampshire
- Rebecca Smith
- Right of Access
- Hampshire songs, poems, and ditties
- In this house
- Words & Walks
- England, Their England
- An Ode to a Road
- The story of a house
- Crime Connections to the City
- John Keat's Ode to Autumn
- William Lisle Bowles, poet
- Future Princes of Winchester
- Spike Island by Philip Hoare
- The marriage of souls
- Rural Rides: William Cobbett
- Elinor Brent-Dyer remembered
- Dornford Yates' Hampshire connection
- The Marlows, their maker and stealing a corner of Dorset
- Saint Cross: England's Oldest Almshouse
- Winchester the whole day through
- HOW TO BE A BETTER PERSON
- Otterbourne's Enid Blyton? Charlotte M. Yonge (1823-1901)
- Odo's Hanging is missing
- The Warden
- Charles Kingsley's Letters
- Owslebury Bottom
- See it My Way
- Introduction to Melesina Trench
- Some Hampshire road signs read Jane Austen Country
- Flora Thompson: published poet
Recent posts
- Virginia Smith remembered
- Mary Sumner
- A272: An Ode to a Road (by Andy)
- The hunt continues
- Winchester MP Mark Oaten to publish book
- Chalet School
- Bags of Books and Enthusiasm
- Chalet School author
- Poetry in the pub
- Wealth of words in Winchester
- Hampshire Gets Going
Help the team
Have you got something to contribute? You can contact us to report your clues and you can comment on our blog posts. It doesn't matter where in the world you are!
Leave a comment