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Laurie Lee (1914-1997) | |
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English poet, memoirist, and novelist, best-known for his autobiographical trilogy CIDER WITH ROSIE (1959), AS I WALKED OUT ONE MIDSUMMER MORNING (1969), and A MOMENT OF WAR (1991). The trilogy depicts Lee's boyhood in the country, his journey to London to seek his fortune and see the world, and his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. "But our waking life, and our growing years, were for the most part spent in the kitchen, and until we married, or ran away, it was the common room we shared. Here we lived and fed in a family fug, not minding the little space, trod on each other like birds in a hole, elbowed our ways without spite, all talking at once or silent at once, or crying against each other, but never I think feeling overcrowded, being as separate as notes in a scale." (from Cider with Rose) Laurie Lee was born in Stroud, Gloucestershire, where life had followed its traditional course for centuries. The families were large, they lived in overcrowded cottages; there were no modern conveniences and it was accepted as a normal pattern of life and death that many children died young. Lee's father lived in London and worked there as a civil servant - his first wife had died and he had married Lee's mother who took care of his two families and believed that one day he would return to her. Lee was educated at the village school and at Stroud Central School. When he was fifteen he left school and became an errand-boy. Lee also gave lectures on the violin. In his teens Lee had already began to write poems. He had met two sisters who encouraged him in his writing aspirations. Both sisters were passionately involved with him. At the age of twenty Lee left for London, and worked for a year as a builder's labourer. He then spent four years travelling in Spain and the eastern Mediterranean. During these years he met a woman who helped him financially and sent him to university to study art. According to many biographical sources, Lee fought in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) in the Republican army against Franco's Nationalists. However, there have been controversial claims that Lee's involvement in the war was a fantasy (for further information, see Valerie Grove's biography Laurie Lee: The Well-Loved Stranger, 1999). Before devoting himself entirely to writing in 1951, Lee worked as a journalist and as a scriptwriter. During World War II he made documentary films for the General Post Office film unit (1939-40), and the Crown Film Unit (1941-43). From 1944 to 1946 he worked as an editor at the Ministry of Information Publications. From 1950 to 1951 he was caption-writer-in-chief for the Festival of Britain, for which service he was awarded the MBE. In 1950 Lee married Catherine Francesca Polge, a Provençal woman; they had one daughter. Lee's first poem appeared in Horizon in 1940, and his first collection, THE SUN MY MONUMENT, was published in 1944. Lee's romantic poems show the influence of Federico García Lorca. He has noted that his poems "were written by someone I once was and who is so distant to me now that I scarcely recognize him anymore." Several poems written in the early 1940s reflect the atmosphere of the war, but also capture the beauty of the English countryside. With A ROSE FOR WINTER (1955) Lee started his autobiographical production. It tells of Lee's trip to Spain 15 years after his first visit, finding a country ravaged by war, but where people enjoyed bullfights and he could earn his living by playing the violin. Cider with Rosie (1959) focused with a series of sketches on the author's childhood in the Gloucestershire village Slad. Parts of the book were published earlier in the magazines Orion, Encounter, The Queen, The Cornhill, Leader Magazine, and The Geographical. The lyrical and sensuous work avoided social or political comments about the hardships of poverty, but presented a variety of memorable, temperamental figures, among them Lee's mother. Lee learns to play the violin, his sister Frances dies, and he has his first early, tentative sexual experiences at the age of 10-11 with Jo, and later with Rosie Burdock, with whom he drinks cider under a hay wagon, and is never the same again. Rosie's identity was kept secret for 25 years. She was in Rose Buckland, Lee's cousin by marriage. In an interview the author later said that the book was not a novel and not an autobiography. "... it is not so much about me as about the world that I observed from my earliest years. It was a world that I wanted to record because it was such a miracle visitation to me. I wanted to communicate what I had seen, so that others could see it." (Laurie Lee in The New York Times, February 24, 1985) The memoir has sold more than six million copies. It was published by Chatto & Windus, and according to Diana Athill, "Laurie must already have been dabbling in the manipulative games with publishers that he was to play with increasing zest in the future..." (from Stet: an editor's life by Diana Athill, 2000) As I Walked out One Midsummer Morning narrates Lee's first trip to Civil War Spain in 1936 and his walk across the country from Vigo to Granada. In Castillo he works in a hotel, but when the city is taken by Franco's troops, he returns to England, only to realize that the war is not over. TWO WOMEN (1983) was a story of Lee's courtship of his wife Cathy, and the birth and growth of their daughter Jessy. A Moment of War told of a young man's walk over the Pyrenees into Spain to fight in the International Brigades in 1937. Before joining the colorful company of volunteers from Russia, France, the United States, England, and other countries, he was arrested as a spy and imprisoned for some time. Lee also wrote travel books, essays, a radio play, short stories. He received several awards, including the Atlantic Award (1944), Society of Authors travelling award (1951), M.B.E. (Member, Order of the British Empire), William Foyle Poetry Prize (1956), W.H. Smith and Son Award (1960). Lee died on May 14, 1997. "Lee was a poet whose deft passage into prose carried with it much of the rhythm and accuracy of the poet's language." (Mignon Khargie, art director of Salon) Note: Rosie's identity from the novel Cider with Rosie was kept secret for 25 years. She was in Rose Buckland, Lee's cousin by marriage - For further information: Cider With Laurie: Laurie Lee Remembered by Barbara Hooper (2000); Laurie Lee: The Well-Loved Stranger by Valerie Grove (1999); Contemporary Popular Writers, ed. by David Mote (1997); The Reader's Companion to Twentieth Century Writers, ed. by Peter Parker (1995); Cider with Rosie, Laurie Lee by Jon Andrews and Timothy Clark (1991); Brodie's Notes on Laurie Lee's Cider with Rosie by Kenneth Hardacre (1986) Selected works:
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