In a North Country Village

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By Listen TheBook Posted on May 30, 2023

In Category - Single Author Collections

Authors: M. E. Francis In Year : 1897

Book Language: English

Audiobook: In a North Country Village

01 - Thornleigh
02 - Gaffer's Child
03 - Celebrities
04 - Nancy
05 - Politics
06 - The Gilly'fers
07 - Aunt Jinny
08 - On the other side of the wall
09 - Little paupers
10 - Here and there
11 - "Our Joe"
12 - Mates

M. E. Francis was born Mary E. Sweetman in Dublin and moved to Lancashire on her marriage to Francis Nicholas Blundell, of the Blundell family, who remain squires of Little Crosby, the last Catholic recusant village in England, which lies a few miles north of Liverpool. Blundell died young and Mary went on to write more than 50 books, using her husband's Christian name as pen name, including this collection of 12 stories set in Little Crosby (‘Thornleigh’).

A romantic portrait of mid-19th century village life written from an aristocratic point of view, In a North Country Village (1896) is built around striking portraits of strong Lancashire women surviving in the face of Hardyesque tragedy and the weaknesses of their men folk. M. E. Francis set many of her books in Ireland and Dorset, but several were set in Lancashire, including A Daughter of the Soil (1895), Yeoman Fleetwood (1900) and Marjory o'th' Mill (1907). (Summary by Phil Benson)