Folio Archives 420: Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee - 2003
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Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee - 2003
This is a gentle, charming but compelling reminiscence of life in a tiny west Cotswold village near Stroud in western Gloucestershire. Laurie Lee recounts his impoverished life from the age of three to about thirteen starting in 1917 and describes changes in village life that had persisted for centuries and ended with the age of the motor charabanc and wireless.
The detailed descriptions of life and the family interactions in a household with a single mother and seven children are entrancing. Laurie leaves no stones unturned as he describes the good and the bad, the joyful care he received from his older sisters and the pranks he performed with school friends, the hard life of his constantly working mother and the fun of a trip to the seaside. The book culminates with the trepidations of teenage courting and a brief underage experience with cider and a not too coy Rosie.
The narrow format book has xiv + 222 pages and is easily read in an afternoon, ideally, I suspect, in a cottage cut off from the world by heavy snow. There is an introduction by Valerie Grove and 18 integrated monochrome illustrations plus chapter tailpieces by Peter Bailey.
The endpapers are plain white while the book is three-quarter bound in light green cloth with a colour image printed paper cover. The black-capped slipcase is printed with a wrap-around colour picture, and measures 26x15.1cm.
The Folio Society also published Cider with Rosie as a collectable edition (small format, no slipcase, same contents as 2003 edition) in 2016 and Laurie Lee’s second book, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, in 2010.
Montage of wrap-around picture on slipcase
An index of the other illustrated reviews in the "Folio Archives" series can be viewed here.
This is a gentle, charming but compelling reminiscence of life in a tiny west Cotswold village near Stroud in western Gloucestershire. Laurie Lee recounts his impoverished life from the age of three to about thirteen starting in 1917 and describes changes in village life that had persisted for centuries and ended with the age of the motor charabanc and wireless.
The detailed descriptions of life and the family interactions in a household with a single mother and seven children are entrancing. Laurie leaves no stones unturned as he describes the good and the bad, the joyful care he received from his older sisters and the pranks he performed with school friends, the hard life of his constantly working mother and the fun of a trip to the seaside. The book culminates with the trepidations of teenage courting and a brief underage experience with cider and a not too coy Rosie.
The narrow format book has xiv + 222 pages and is easily read in an afternoon, ideally, I suspect, in a cottage cut off from the world by heavy snow. There is an introduction by Valerie Grove and 18 integrated monochrome illustrations plus chapter tailpieces by Peter Bailey.
The endpapers are plain white while the book is three-quarter bound in light green cloth with a colour image printed paper cover. The black-capped slipcase is printed with a wrap-around colour picture, and measures 26x15.1cm.
The Folio Society also published Cider with Rosie as a collectable edition (small format, no slipcase, same contents as 2003 edition) in 2016 and Laurie Lee’s second book, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, in 2010.
Montage of wrap-around picture on slipcase
An index of the other illustrated reviews in the "Folio Archives" series can be viewed here.
2folio_books
One of my favourite books of all time. It left a huge impression on me when I first read it and I quickly snatched up the Folio edition when first published. This review has inspired me to maybe attempt a re-read.
3assemblyman
FS also published the sequel As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning. It's strange that they did not complete the trilogy with A Moment of War.
4PartTimeBookAddict
Wonderful book. There's no way they'll do the third one. I'll have to track down a copy somewhere to finish the trilogy.
Nice review.
Nice review.
5cottonoverwood
Thank you for the reminder - a lovely edition of a charming book. I’ve yet to read it’s sequel(s).
