Green Knowe Books In Order

Publication Order of Green Knowe Books

The “Green Knowe” series is a set of children’s fiction works by popular author Lucy M. Boston. One interesting thing about Boston is that she published most of her works after turning sixty years old.

The Green Knowe series have come to be her most popular so far, despite writing several other works for adults and children. The “Green Knowe” series of novels are inspired by the old Hemingway Gray manor house, which is where she lived for several years.
For her works, Lucy Boston would win several prestigious awards over the years. Over the course of her career, she has become known as one of the best at crafting interesting children’s fiction.

She is also known for the magical garden at the manor house that she calls home which also doubles as the setting for the “Green Knowe” series. Aside from her writings, she is also a creative artist having studied drawing and painting for a time when she lived in Vienna.

Lucy M. Boston is a native of Southport, Lancashire where she was born in 1892 to a middle class wesleyan family. Her father practiced as an engineer and was a one time mayor, while her mother was a cold but very sensitive and intense woman.

As staunch Wesleyans, her father was a man she knew to be full of religious fervor that loved to collect religious epithets and painted friezes. He was a man that loved the beautiful things in life, particularly if they were connected somehow to his religious convictions.
She believes that her sense of music, art and nature was a product of her father’s passionate side and love for art.

When she was just six years old, her father died and she was left rudderless given how much she loved him. She would subsequently head to Westmorland to go to school and it is here that she got to enjoy the wide expanses of the countryside that would inform her novels in later years.

The “Green Knowe” series by Lucy M Boston is a set of children’s fiction novels published between 1954 and 1976. The novels are set in an old manor house in Huntingdonshire. In the series, the author writes about several characters she imagines could have lived in the manor house.
She would win several awards for the series including the Carnegie Medal for the 1961 published “A Stranger at Green Knowe” the fourth title in the series. Most of the stories in the series are about a boy named Toseland and Mrs. Oldknow, his great grandmother.

The old manor house known as “Green Knowe” is home to several ghosts of people that once called it home. Over the course of the series, several of the ghosts that start out as children become adults.

There are other supernatural entities in the series which include “Green Noah” the demonic tree spirit, Orlando the children’s dog and St. Christopher’s animated statue.

“The Children of Green Knowe” the debut of the series was adapted into a BBC One eponymous drama, radio play on BBC Radio 4 and later into a film in 2009.

Lucy M. Boston’s “Children of Green Knowe” is an excellent tale of a young boy who goes to live with his grandmother in rural England. He is to now live in an old manor house complete with a whimsical topiary, an empty stable and several ghosts.

Toly the boy makes friends with the ghosts that are supposedly of children that once upon a time lived in the house. The story goes from the past to the present as the author makes use of the memories of the children, the lead’s curiosity and the interesting stories told by his grandmother to move the story forward.
Once upon a time the ancient house Tolly calls home had been named Green Noah to dilute the dreadful association with ghosts. Given its history, it is a place where the present exists alongside the past. Unfortunately, some dark things from the past will disrupt many lives in the present.
It is a beautiful story full of childhood joys but on the other hand also genuine horror.

“The Chimneys of Green Knowe” is one of the most interesting of the Green Knowe series of novels by Lucy M. Boston.
Tolly is once again visiting Green Knowe to spend his summer vacation with Oldknow, his great grandmother. He is upset since his grandmother took down some of the portraits that had been of the children whose ghosts he had made friends with in the past.

But he is even more alarmed when his grandmother informs him that she had lent the portraits to a local gallery to raise some money to maintain the estate. The author puts together some excellent descriptions of the estate, especially of the house and the well manicured grounds.

Her vivid descriptions of the natural world in which all manner of animals and plants live make one want to enter the story and interact with old Grandmother Oldknow and Tolly, her grandson.

From Oldknow, Tolly learns about how to repair things and in such an ancient property, there are many things that do need to be maintained. By following the instructions of his grandmother, he manages to save the portraits of the ghosts of the children that had over time become his best friends.

“The River at Green Knowe,” the third novel of the Green Knowe series of novels, continues to follow Lucy M Boston as she takes her readers on a journey of unlimited imagination and innocence.

This work follows the residents of the old manor who include Dr. Maud Biggin an archeologist and Miss Sybilla who has been known to provide and cook the food. The residents who are staying for the summer have united two homeless children in Oscar and Ping to stay with them at the house.
The house is usually safe from the elements even as much of the nearby lands are regularly inundated with water when it floods. They are idyllic and pure lands and would be the perfect place to live had it not been for the floods.

The children venture out into the water often to try to find some adventure. It is while they are out on an adventure that they encounter some bizarre creatures that include an aggressive owl, giants, a hermit and flying horses.