Cider with Rosie
Cider with Rosie, autobiographical novel by Laurie Lee (1914–1997), published in 1959. An account of the author’s idyllic childhood in an isolated village in the Cotswolds of Gloucestershire immediately after World War I, the book was an instant classic, widely read in British schools. The book nostalgically evokes the simplicity and innocence of a vanished rural world amid the swirl of technological change and was followed by two more volumes in what became an autobiographical trilogy, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969), a description of Lee’s trip to London to seek his fortune, and A Moment of War (1991), an account of his experiences in Spain during that country’s civil war.
An extremely vivid description of the author’s life in a small English village, Slad, in the early part of the 20th century, Cider With Rosie depicts a world that was soon to vanish: a world where transport was limited to the horse and cart, and where there were few reasons to travel away from one’s home. What is perhaps most remarkable about it, and has kept it a firm readers’ favorite since it was first published, is the rich lushness of the description. The cottage garden, for example, as seen through the eyes and other senses of a young child, becomes a world of its own. Many of the episodes are also richly comic, yet there is also a sense of tragedy, a sense that the certainty and routine that once controlled village life have now vanished. The protagonist’s mother, abandoned by her husband with two families and seven children to cope with, leads a life of extraordinary drudgery, yet her longing for, and recognition of, the greater things in life rarely falters.
Most of all, perhaps, Lee, known in the book by his childhood nickname Lol, makes no attempt to prettify country life; although there are marvelous things to be found in the fields and hedgerows, their home lacks running water, indoor plumbing, or electricity, and there is also a commonplace brutality to country living, including incest, violent sexual relations, and even murder. The counterbalance to this is the sense of tradition, of belonging, which has disappeared as modernity has spread to the most distant places of England and the world at large.
Although he lacked a formal education, Lee was a masterful writer and the author of many celebrated books, including five volumes of poetry. Cider with Rosie, however, remains his best-known work. It has been filmed three times, the first in 1971, the second in 1998, and the third in 2015, each drawing on a screenplay written by Lee himself. The Laurie Lee Wildlife Way and several nature reserves, administered by the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust, preserve much of the author’s beloved Slad Valley, the setting for his book.