Description

A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024

‘A fascinating look at the impact of country home-making on the lives and work of Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Rosamond Lehmann. It’s beautifully written, gorgeously produced, absorbing and full of insight’ Sarah Waters, Guardian

In Rural Hours, Harriet Baker tells the story of three very different women, each of whom moved to the countryside and was forever changed by it. We encounter them at quiet moments – pausing to look at an insect on the windowsill; jotting down a recipe; or digging for potatoes, dirt beneath their nails. Slowly, we start to see transformations unfold: Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Townsend Warner, and Rosamond Lehmann emerge before us as the passionate, visionary writers we know them to be.

Following long periods of creative uncertainty and private disappointment, each of Baker’s subjects is invigorated by new landscapes, and the daily trials and small pleasures of making a home; slowly, they embark on new experiments in form, in feeling and in living that would resonate throughout the rest of their lives. In the country, each woman finds her path: to convalescence and recovery; to sexual and political awakening; and, above all, to personal freedom and creative flourishing.

In graceful, fluid prose, Baker vividly recreates these overlooked episodes, revealing how ‘rural hours’ defined the lives of three pioneering writers. In the end, she shows, their example is an invitation to us all: to recognize the radical and creative potential of rural places, and find new enchantment in the rituals of each day.

‘Warm, perceptive, eloquent … Like Baker’s protagonists in their countryside boltholes I felt “socketed” by this book. I know I’ll return to it again and again’ Lauren Elkin

‘A meditative exploration of renewal, visionariness, grievous loss, and love – cool and passionate, fragile and enduring’ David Hayden

Publisher Review

An outstanding piece of literary scholarship … A biography that is far more intimate than most … By choosing to embrace the daily routines of rural life, Baker proposes, these women found that the quality of their attention shifted … Rural Hours is also a provocation to the present. No one could finish this book without concluding that the most important thing to any writer is solitude … [It] reminds us that today we too often fail to afford our writers this necessity — Charlotte Stroud * Financial Times * Rural Hours is beautifully written, and Baker’s reading is wide and deep * Observer * Rural Hours is a page turner – lively, inspiring and beautifully crafted. It’s a reminder of the value of rural living and quiet observation for the imagination. Most literary biographers struggle to get the right balance between life writing and critique, but Baker has achieved it seamlessly with this astonishingly confident debut. She has made literary criticism exciting again. — Johanna Thomas-Corr * The Sunday Times * A delightful read, enhanced by quirky photographs – including several of these visionary writers with their goats * Independent * Rural Hours is Harriet Baker’s first book and it is immensely readable. It bristles with evocative detail and she invests each chapter with the narrative drive of a short story. […] Baker is extremely good at finding significance in the ordinary and has a feel for the thinginess of domestic existence, for what teacups or the grocer’s bill can reveal. She sifts quiet periods of homemaking for meaning and honours the bulb-planting, sheet-folding, list-making and resourceful cooking that contributed to the texture of the subjects’ days and fed back into their writing. * Literary Review * Baker is an elegant and eloquent storyteller – and authoritative even while she’s in thrall, rightly, to the three women who make this book so often fascinating. * Spectator * An absorbing study of the impact of country living on Woolf, Townsend Warner & Lehmann. A meditative exploration of renewal, visionariness-interior & exterior, generative & tormenting-grievous loss, & love-cool & passionate, fragile & enduring — David Hayden A superb portrait of the complex imprint the countryside makes on the life of the mind, this exquisite book reveals three writers, each vividly drawn in the particularities of her own surroundings, her own difficulties and joys. This book is a thoughtful exploration of rural life and creativity, drawing on deep archival roots and Harriet Baker’s unique warmth and eloquence. A treasure — Doireann Ni Ghriofa, author of A Ghost in the Throat Baker conjures the sights and sounds of mid-20th-century rural England with vivid lyricism * The Sunday Times * In this warm, perceptive, eloquent study, Harriet Baker collects some overlooked moments in these women’s lives, and with great honesty and empathy, captures what it felt like to live and write through them. Like Baker’s protagonists in their countryside boltholes I felt “socketed” by this book. I know I’ll return to it again and again — Lauren Elkin, author of Flaneuse and Art Monsters