MACMILLAN MASTER GUIDES GENERAL EDITOR: JAMES GIBSON Published JANE AUSTEN Emma Norman Page Persuasion Judy Simons Sense and Sensibility Judy Simons Pride and Prejudice Raymond Wilson Mansfield Park Richard Wirdnam SAMUEL BECKETI Waiting for Godot Jennifer Birkett WILLIAM BLAKE Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience Alan Tomlinson ROBERT BOLT A Man for All Seasons Leonard Smith CHARLOTTE BRONTE Jane Eyre Robert Miles EMILY BRONTE Wuthering Heights Hilda D. Spear GEOFFREY CHAUCER The Miller's Tale Michael Alexander The Pardoner's Tale Geoffrey Lester The Wife of Bath's Tale Nicholas Marsh The Knight's Tale Anne Samson The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales Nigel Thomas and Richard Swan JOSEPH CONRAD The Secret Agent Andrew Mayne CHARLES DICKENS Bleak House Dennis Butts Great Expectations Dennis Butts Hard Times Norman Page GEORGE ELIOT Middlemarch Graham Handley Silas Marner Graham Handley The Mill on the Floss Helen Wheeler T S. ELIOT Murder in the Cathedral Paul Lapworth Selected Poems Andrew Swarbrick HENRY FIELDING Joseph Andrews Trevor Johnson EM. FORSTER Howards End Ian Milligan A Passage to India Hilda D. Spear WILLIAM GOLDING The Spire Rosemary Sumner Lord of the Flies Raymond Wilson OLIVER GOLDSMITH She Stoops to Conquer Paul Ranger THOMAS HARDY The Mayor of Casterbridge Ray Evans Tess of the d'Urbervilles James Gibson Far from the Madding Crowd Colin Temblett-Wood GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS Selected Poems R. J. C. Watt JOHN KEATS Selected Poems John Garrett BEN JONSON Volpone Michael Stout PHILIP LARKIN The Whitsun Weddings and The Less Deceived Andrew Swarbrick DHLAWRENCE Sons and Lovers R. P. Draper HARPER LEE To Kill a Mockingbird Jean Armstrong LAURIE LEE Cider with Rosie Brian Tarbitt MACMILLAN MASTER GUIDES CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE Doctor Faustus David A. Male THE METAPHYSICAL POETS Joan van Emden THOMAS MIDDLETON and The Changeling Tony Bromham WILLIAM ROWLEY ARTHUR MILLER The Crucible Leonard Smith Death of a Salesman Peter Spalding GEORGE ORWELL Animal Farm Jean Armstrong WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Richard II Charles Barber Hamlet Jean Brooks Othello Tony Bromham King Lear Francis Casey Henry V Peter Davison The Winter's Tale Diana Devlin Julius Caesar David Elloway Macbeth David Elloway TheMerchantofVenice A.M. Kinghorn Measure for Measure Mark Lilly Henry IV Part/ Helen Morris A Midsummer Night's Dream Kenneth Pickering Romeo and Juliet Helen Morris The Tempest Kenneth Pickering Coriolanus Gordon Williams Antony and Cleopatra Martin Wine GEORGE BERNARD SHAW St Joan Leonee Ormond RICHARD SHERIDAN The School for Scandal Paul Ranger The Rivals Jeremy Rowe ALFRED TENNYSON In Memoriam Richard Gill ANTHONY TROLLOPE Barchester Towers K. M. Newton JOHN WEBSTER The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi David A. Male VIRGINIA WOOLF To the Lighthouse John Mepham Mrs Dalloway Julian Pattison WILLIAM WORDSWORTH The Prelude Books I and II Helen Wheeler Forthcoming JOHN BUNYAN The Pilgrim's Progress Beatrice Batson RUDYARD KIPLING Kim Leonee Ormond JOHN MILTON Comus Tom Healy WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE As You Like It Kiernan Ryan W. B. YEATS Selected Poems Stan Smith MACMILLAN MASTER GUIDES CIDER WITH ROSIE BY LAURIE LEE BRIAN T ARB ITT M MACMILLAN EDUCATION © Brian Tarbitt 1988 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with the written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended), or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 33-4 Alfred Place, London WC1E 7DP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Tarbitt, Brian Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee.-(Macmillan master guides). 1. Lee, Laurie. Cider with Rosie I. Title II. Lee, Laurie. Cider with Rosie 942.4'17083'0924 PR6023.E ISBN 978-0-333-44276-0 ISBN 978-1-349-09540-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-09540-7 ISBN 978-0-333-44277-7 Pbk export v CONTENTS General editor's preface vii Acknowledgements viii 1 Laurie Lee: An introduction 1 2 Section summaries and critical commentary 3 3 Themes and issues 3.1 Earth and nature 36 3.2 Growing up 37 3.3 Nostalgia 41 3.4 Lee's world view 44 4 Technical features 4.1 Lee's style 46 4.2 Lee as a narrator 58 4.3 The people in the book 61 5 Specimen passage and commentary 74 6 Critical reception 78 Revision questions 80 Further reading 81 vii GENERAL EDITOR'S PREFACE The aim of the Macmillan Master Guides is to help you to appreciate the book you are studying by providing information about it and by suggesting ways of reading and thinking about it which will lead to a fuller understanding. The section on the writer's life and background has been designed to illustrate those aspects of the writer's life which have influenced the work, and to place it in its personal and literary context. The summaries and critical commentary are of special importance in that each brief summary of the action is followed by an examination of the significant critical points. The space which might have been given to repetitive explanatory notes has been devoted to a detailed analysis of the kind of passage which might confront you in an examination. Literary criticism is concerned with both the broader aspects of the work being studied and with its detail. The ideas which meet us in reading a great work of literature, and their relevance to us today, are an essential part of our study, and our Guides look at the thought of their subject in some detail. But just as essential is the craft with which the writer has constructed his work of art, and this may be considered under several technical headings - character isation, language, style and stagecraft, for example. The authors of these Guides are all teachers and writers of wide experience, and they have chosen to write about books they admire and know well in the belief that they can communicate their admiration to you. But you yourself must read and know intimately the book you are studying. No one can do that for you. You should see this book as a lamp-post. Use it to shed light, not to lean against. If you know your text and know what it is saying about life, and how it says it, then you will enjoy it, and there is no better way of passing an examination in literature. JAMES GIBSON viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS All page references in this book refer to the edition of Cider with Rosie published by Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England. B.T.B. The author and publishers wish to thank the following who have kindly given permission for the use of copyright material. Chatto & Windus Ltd. and The Hogarth Press Ltd. for extracts from Cider With Rosie by Laurie Lee, 1959, The Hogarth Press. Every effort has been made to trace all the copyright holders but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity. Cover illustration: a detail from Farms near Auvers by Vincent Van Gogh. Photograph© Tate Gallery Publications. 1 1 LAURIE LEE: AN INTRODUCTION It is perhaps typical of Lee's individuality and 'otherness' that in Cider with Rosie, an autobiography, he does not actually tell us when he was born. In fact, the date was 26 June 1914, just a few short weeks before the outbreak of the First World War, which was almost at an end when that book opened. The place of his birth was Stroud, a small Gloucestershire town. Lee's was a large family, with three half-sisters, two half-brothers (one of whom, however, lived with his grandmother) and two full brothers. His father left his mother when Laurie was very young (though with an even younger brother), necessitating the move of the family to the valley village of Slad and the cottage which was to be his home until he left to make his remarkable journey to Spain. This journey he recounted years later in As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning. It took him- all on foot- from his home down to the south coast of England, and then up to London; after several months spent laying bricks he again took to his feet, spent four pounds on a ticket to Vigo, in northern Spain, and from there walked the length of the country, taking in some of the great towns and cities but also treading the virtually unknown tracks of that fascinating country, ending on what is now the Costa del Sol. (This journey, undertaken by a young boy of nineteen to twenty, entirely alone, without even a smattering of Spanish when he set out, without money, and in a country visited by very few Britons, was an astonishing venture.) After being evacuated from Spain by the Royal Navy, because of the increasing danger to British citizens created by the onset of the Spanish Civil War, he returned briefly to England. But his identifica tion with Spain and its tragic problems soon compelled him to go 2 back again. The Civil War over, he then spent further time tramping the Mediterranean area. For financial support he played the fiddle on the streets - a skill he alludes to in Cider with Rosie and develops in As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning. But it was his other great talent, writing, which was to sustain him from that time onwards. By the end of Cider with Rosie he had begun 'to make up poems from intense abstraction ... imagination scarce ly faltering once, rhythm hardly skipping a beat'. To a succession of wartime and post-war jobs with official Film Units, and a spell as Publications Editor with the Ministry of Information, was added his first published book of poems, The Sun My Monument (1944) followed by The Bloom of Candles (1947) and My Many-Coated Man (1955). As well as these volumes he produced prose works and drama: Land at War (1945); A Film in Cyprus (1947, jointly with Frank Keene); The Voyage of Magellan (1948); and A Rose for Winter (1955). However, it was Cider with Rosie (1959)- published a year later in the USA as Edge of Day - which brought him to a much wider audience; As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969) and I Can't Stay Long (1975) have also been widely acclaimed, the British Broadcasting Corporation recently producing a splendid two-hour account of As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, with Lee himself reading voice-over extracts from the work. Among many prizes and awards gained by his writings are theW. H. Smith Award for Literature (for Cider with Rosie) and the Foyle Poetry Award (for My Many-Coated Man); his work has also been the 'special choice' of various book clubs and societies. Lee married in 1950; his daughter is the subject of The Firstborn (1964). He was awarded the MBE in 1952 and now lives mainly in London, listing his recreations as 'indoor sports, music, travel'.