Lucy M. Boston facts for kids

Lucy M. Boston (born Lucy Maria Wood, 1892–1990) was an English writer who created stories for both children and adults. She started publishing her books after she turned 60!

She is most famous for her "Green Knowe" series. These are six fantasy adventure books for children, published between 1954 and 1976. The stories take place at Green Knowe, an old country house inspired by Lucy Boston's own home in Cambridgeshire, called The Manor at Hemingford Grey.

Her fourth book in the series, A Stranger at Green Knowe (1961), won the important Carnegie Medal. This award celebrates the best children's book by a British subject each year.

During her long life, Lucy Boston was known for her writing, especially her children's books. She also created a beautiful, magical garden. She was a talented artist who studied painting in Vienna, and she was skilled at sewing, making many unique patchwork designs.

Biography

Early Life and Family

Lucy Wood was born in Southport, Lancashire, on December 10, 1892. She was the fifth of six children. Her father, James Wood, was an engineer and had even been the Mayor of Stockport. Her mother was Mary Garrett.

Lucy described her family as a typical, well-off family from the Victorian era. They were also very religious, belonging to a group called the Wesleyans. Lucy felt very close to her father, describing him as "eccentric" but "good-humoured." She believed she looked a lot like him and was his favorite child.

Her father was 40 when he married her mother, who was half his age. Lucy mentioned that it wasn't a marriage based on love, but one arranged by her mother's family. Her mother was described as very gentle and religious, but not very emotional.

An Unusual Home

Lucy's father had a very unique way of decorating their home. In every room, there were painted designs with religious sayings like "Honour thy father and thy mother." The most unusual room was the drawing room. Her father had visited the Holy Land and wanted to make the room feel holy and inspiring.

The drawing room had a long painting of the journey from Jerusalem to Jericho all around the walls. From the ceiling hung old brass lamps, like those you might imagine in Solomon's Temple. There were also special spaces in the walls with curved wooden arches, like those found in Moorish architecture. Many beautiful brass objects and other rare items were displayed in a glass cabinet. Lucy said this room looked like "a gentleman’s enthusiastic and satisfied near-lunacy."

Lucy's father loved art and music, even though he expressed it through his religious beliefs. Her mother was very religious and simple in her tastes. Lucy felt that her mother's strict influence made her want to explore art, music, and nature even more as she grew up.

Childhood Changes

Lucy's father died when she was six years old. This changed her family's life a lot. Her mother was left with just enough money to keep their house, but each child received a small amount of money for their education.

After her father's death, all the Wood children went to school. For one year, they moved to Westmorland, near her mother's family home. This was said to be for her mother's health. This move to the beautiful countryside, away from the city, gave the children a much freer lifestyle. Lucy loved the "wide and inexhaustible joys of Arnside," which was on a river estuary. The children could explore woods, fields, cliffs, and coves.

Lucy especially loved seeing Spring arrive with primroses and wild daffodils. In Southport, the only signs of Spring were the trees along the streets, and her mother never had flowers in the house. Lucy developed a love for plants and gardens early on. She often mentioned how plain and empty the gardens of her childhood seemed. This is important because she later became a famous gardener at The Manor.

Returning to Southport after that year was hard for Lucy. She missed the natural world, the sounds of river birds, and flocks of sandpipers and curlews.

After school, Lucy went to a finishing school in Paris. When it was time for her to officially join the Wesleyan community, she refused, much to her mother's dismay. Her mother cried and begged, saying Lucy was "lost," but Lucy stood firm. She felt she was searching for something, not denying her faith.

Adult Life and The Manor

In Autumn 1914, at the start of World War I, Lucy went to Somerville College, Oxford, to study English. After her first year, she decided to leave college and become a volunteer nurse. She wanted to go to France, where the war was happening. Her brothers were all serving in the military. Sadly, her youngest brother Philip went missing in 1917 when his plane was shot down.

In her memoir, Perverse and Foolish (1979), Lucy wrote about her wartime experiences. After training in London and Cambridge, she worked at a hospital in Normandy, France. She tried to make the hospital experience better for wounded soldiers, even playing games like draughts with them. This almost got her into trouble with the head nurse!

Lucy married her distant cousin, Harold Boston, in September 1917. They had one son, Peter Shakerley Boston, born in September 1918. After her marriage ended in 1935, Lucy traveled in Europe, visiting musical cities in France, Italy, Austria, and Hungary. She studied painting in Vienna for several years.

Her memoir Perverse and Foolish ends with her return to England in 1937. She rented rooms in Cambridge, where her son Peter, then 19, was a university student. Lucy heard a house was for sale in the nearby village of Hemingford Grey. She remembered seeing an old farmhouse from the river in 1915 and thought this must be it. She drove to Hemingford Grey, knocked on the door, and told the owners she wanted to buy it. It turned out they had just decided to sell that morning, and the house she was supposed to see was a different one entirely! She never found out which house she was originally meant to visit.

Another memoir, Memory in a House, describes her life after moving into The Manor. This book, written when Lucy was 81, is like a love letter to her home. In 1992, both memoirs were published together as Memories.

The Manor, built around 1130, is an ancient Norman Manor house. It is believed to be one of the oldest houses in the British Isles that has been lived in continuously. This house became the main focus and inspiration for Lucy's creative work for the rest of her life. She started working on the garden as soon as the most important repairs to the house were finished.

Writing Career and Later Life

Lucy started writing later in life. Her first book, Yew Hall, a novel for adults, was published in 1954 when she was over 60. She called it "a poem to celebrate my love of the house."

After that, she wrote a series of children's books, all set at The Manor. In these stories, she imagined the people who might have lived there long ago and brought them to life. Her son, Peter Boston, drew the cover for Yew Hall and went on to illustrate all her children's books. His pictures show different parts of the house and gardens, and many of the objects inside.

Lucy Boston lived at The Manor for almost 50 years. During this time, she created the beautiful, romantic garden that she felt was perfect for the old house, and she wrote all her famous children's books.

Death

Lucy Boston passed away on May 25, 1990, at the age of 97. Her son Peter, who was an architect and illustrator, lived in The Manor (Green Knowe) with his wife Diana until he died in 1999. The Manor is still owned by the family today, and both the house and its wonderful garden are open for people to visit.

Patchworks

Lucy Boston made more than 20 patchworks during her life. These were not widely known until 1976, when her friend, the famous musician Christopher Hogwood, arranged an exhibition of them. Lucy's daughter-in-law, Diana Boston, later wrote a book about these patchworks called The Patchworks of Lucy Boston (1985).

Books

Green Knowe series

• The Children of Green Knowe (1954)
• The Chimneys of Green Knowe (1958); also known as Treasure of Green Knowe in the U.S.
• The River at Green Knowe (1959)
• A Stranger at Green Knowe (1961)
• An Enemy at Green Knowe (1964)
• The Stones of Green Knowe (1976)

The Green Knowe series was published by Faber and Faber and by Puffin Books.

Other fiction

• Yew Hall (1954)
• The Sea Egg (1967)
• The Castle of Yew (1968)
• Persephone (also called Strongholds) (1969)
• The House That Grew (1969)
• The Horned Man: Or, Whom Will You Send To Fetch Her Away (1970)
• Nothing Said (1971)
• The Guardians of the House (1974)
• The Fossil Snake (1975)
• "Curfew", a short story in the book The House of the Nightmare: and other Eerie Tales (1967)

A book of her poems, Time Is Undone: Twenty-Five Poems by Lucy M. Boston, was published in 1977.

In 2011, a collection of Boston's supernatural stories, Curfew & Other Eerie Tales, was published. This book includes stories that had never been published before.

Her two memoirs, Perverse and Foolish and Memory in a House, were published together in 1992 under the title Memories.

Adaptations

• A TV mini-series based on The Children of Green Knowe was shown by the BBC in 1986.
• A film called From Time To Time (2009) was written and directed by Julian Fellowes. This movie is based on the second Green Knowe book, The Chimneys (also known as Treasure).