• At Kittys Tales we have Laurie Lee's most famous tale in an attractive vintage hardback edtion. Read about the life of this famous author of the poignant novel 'Cider with Rosie'.

    Take time to explore our stores other great classic novels and vintage books from the most famous authors of the 20th century. As well as antique books from the 19th century and lots more modern collectable editions.

    If 'Cider with Rosie' is not your choice perhaps you might like our excellent collection of golden age crime, great vintage paperbacks and fun vintage children's books

    Read on below to learn more about this popular 20th century author and his greatest book, view our carefully curated collections of nostalgic books and find more of our favourite and must-read vintage classics.

  • Laurie Lee the author wearing a tweed suit and tie with slicked back hair
Drawing of Cottage Kitchen in Cider With Rosie Laurie Lee Vintage Hardback Book Bodley Head 1978

Kitty's Classic Reads: Laurie Lee's Greatest Book and Biographical Classic 'Cider with Rosie'

Rural idyll or rites of passage? Either way Laurie Lee's great English novel has become a megalith in English Literature. With its heady prose and lilting rhythm we travel with Laurie through his youth in the early 20th century. This classic book has gone down in history as being an important record of a lost rural way of life offered here in an attractive vintage edition with the original jacket design of the first edition.

Buy This Book
Laurie Lee the author wearing a tweed suit and tie with slicked back hair

"So each morning at dawn I lay in a trance of thanks. I sniffed the room and smelt its feathers, the water in the wash-jug, the dust in the corners, kind odours of glass and paper, the dry stones facing the windowsills, bees bruising the geranium leaves, the pine in the pencil beside my bed, the dead candle and the fire in the matchstick."

Cider with Rosie - Laurie Lee

Laurie Lee, and Cider with Rosie. The author andthe book linked forever in one of the most iconic pieces of English literature that so poignantly depicts the end of an era and the coming of age of Laurie, married throughout with the harsh realisation that nothing ever stays the same.

Laurie Lee, the youngest but one of a family of eight, was born in 1914 his mother struggled on her own to raise his family as she had been abandoned by her husband. And all the while the first world war hung like a heavy cloud over a small unvisited Cotswold valley. Laurie Lee lived in a village there called Slad until he was around twenty. The village was poor, self sufficient, and still mainly feudal.  In this account of his early years he tells of thin winters, fat summers, local legends and ghosts, of neighbours and revelations, and of boys growing up against a half pagan landscape in which violence and madness, country follies and feasts, were all part of the pastoral mess-pot.

The village he recalls, trickling down its steep damp pastures and ruled by a minor Squire, was rough, beautiful, uncouth and silly, but still very much alive.  But the time was the 20's, and a change was due although indeed it came late to this valley. Born to a world where nothing moved faster than the horse, the author saw the first brass-lamped motor come steaming up the valley, saw the old people disappear with their 'thees' and 'thou's', saw the end of a way of life which had persisted for a thousand years.  

Such a world can never be known again, and to mourn it may be a mistake.  The author merely tells us that this was how it was - and that he saw the end of it.

And that is his masterpiece. 'Cider with Rosie'. First published in 1959...

Collapsible content

Read More

A book that so many of us studied in our English Literature classes, that still lingers today as a timeless masterpiece. To read the book is to explore an England that ripples hazily in our memory full of rich dialects and a more simple way of life. Perhaps the author felt stifled by this life we mourn, as in 1934 he famously 'upped sticks' abandoning the shackles of country life, and headed to London a self-taught country boy with more ambition than Dick Whittington.

Laurie was embraced by the London literary circles but perhaps the essence of him remained firmly in the pages of 'Cider with Rosie' and the simple country life that formed him,  despite writing other books  'As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning' (1969) and 'A Moment of War' (1991) he never again reached the heady commercial success that he achieved with his lyrical opus echoing the pastoral novels of Thomas Hardy that lingered so poignantly in the hearts of English folk. But he gained great literary esteem throughout his life which is more than many such literary writers are blessed with, magnificent success often coming far later, too late.

In Laurie's later years he seemed to become somewhat saddened with life and reportedly tended towards drinking rather too much whiling away hours at the Chelsea Arts Club. Maybe giving testament to the end of a way of life was a heavy burden for him to bear. He died in 1997 just before the beginning of a new millenium. He was outlived however, by Rosie, his cousin who was of course immortalized in his book 'Cider with Rosie'. She died shortly before her 100th birthday in 2014, still carrying fond memories of her time in Slad with Laurie.

Books by this Author

Timeline of Books by Laurie Lee:

1945: Land at War
1947: We Made a Film in Cyprus with Ralph Keene
1951: An Obstinate Exile
1955: A Rose for Winter: Travels in Andalusia
1959: Cider with Rosie (1959); published in the US as The Edge of Day
1960: Man Must Move: The Story of Transport with David Lambert
1964: The Firstborn
1969: As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning
1975: I Can't Stay Long
1978: Innocence in the Mirror
1983: Two Women
1991: A Moment of War

Poetry Works:

1944: The Sun My Monument
1947: The Bloom of Candles: Verse from a Poet's Year
1955: My Many-Coated Man
1960: The Pocket Poets Laurie Lee
1983: Selected Poems