Lucy M. Boston Books In Order

Publication Order of Green Knowe Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Lucy M. Boston is an English children’s fiction and adult fiction author who is best known for the “Green Knowe” series. She is very different from many authors in the genre as she published her novels after she turned sixty.

Her Green Knowe novels were set at an old country manor house that the author has said is based on the old Hemingford Grey in Cambridgeshire. She would win several awards over the years including a best children’s book in the UK award.

During her long career, she made her name for her many children’s novels and for her magical garden that she made from scratch. Boston was also an accomplished artist who studied painting and drawing in Vienna.

Boston was born in Southport, Lancashire in 1892 to Mary Garrett and James Wood, a one time mayor and career engineer. She was brought up in an affluent and solid middle class family that were Wesleyans.

Her mother was an intensely sensitive woman that did not have an ounce of sensuous feeling or maternal feeling. Her father was full of religious fervor and was by all means an eccentric who filled the house with painted friezes with religious epithets. Her father was a man with an appreciation for the beautiful things of life though he channeled this through his religious conviction.

Lucy M. Boston believes that it was her fathers nature and passionate side that rubbed off on her and instilled in her a sense of nature, art, and music evident in her novels. She also believes that her development as a young adult had much to do with wanting to cast off the repressive influence of her mother.
Things changed when her father died when she was just six though he left behind enough for every child to attend school. Lucy would then spend much of her childhood in Westmorland away from modernization and tourism.

It was here that she got to enjoy the inexhaustible and wide expanse of the countryside that she would include in her later works.

As an adult Lucy M. Boston went to Somerville College but left in the second term as she wanted to volunteer as a nurse. She would write about her experiences in World War in Perverse and Foolish her memoir.

Lucy got married to Harold Boston, her distant cousin and the two would live at Norton Lodge with their son Peter Boston. After her divorce in 1935, she travelled all over Europe visiting the musical capitals of Europe in Hungary, France, Austria and Italy. She also immersed herself in painting after studying the art in Vienna.

She would later move to Hemingford Grey with her son and would renovate and restore the famous Manor that would become the inspiration for the setting of many of her novels.

Unlike many of her contemporaries, writing was something she started very late in life as the 1954 published novel Yew Hall was published when she was more than sixty years old. She would then write her Green Knowe series of novels set in The Manor.

Boston lived at The Manor for more than half a century, during which she made the romantic garden which she would make into the appropriate setting for her children’s novels. The author suffered two strokes in 1990 and would die of complications later in the year.

“Children of Green Knowe” by Lucy M. Boston is a perfect novel that tells a beautiful story of a small boy that is sent to live in rural England with his grandmother. He is going to be living in an ancient vast house complete with an empty stable, whimsical topiary and the obligatory ghosts.

Tolly’s newest playmates are immediately obvious to anyone and even though they may not be real they seem so alive. The story moves from the past to the present seamlessly as the author uses the children’s memories, Tolly’s curiosity and the grandmother’s stories to move it forward.

The Manor had once upon a time been known as Green Noah as the owners did not like the dreadful association. It is a place where the past exists alongside the present and things come to the present with no warning. Unfortunately, there are some dangerous things from the past that may come to the present to disrupt lives.
It is a story filled with beautiful joys of childhood but also genuine horror.

Lucy M. Boston’s “The Chimneys of Green Knowe” sees Tolly back at GreenKnowe where he is spending the vacation with his grandmother. He is upset that someone had taken down the portraits of three ancestor children he had made friends with when he visited last Christmas.

His alarm is heightened when his grandmother says that she had to lend some of the portraits to an art exhibit since she did not have money to maintain the estate.

Boston writes some great descriptions of the estate particularly those of the grounds and house. Her vivid descriptions of the plants and animals in the natural world make one want to step into the story and live the life of Tolly and grandmother Oldknow.

It is from his great grandmother that Tolly learns how to repair many things that need maintenance on the property. By doing what his grandmother instructs him to do, he saves the portraits of the children whose ghosts he had earlier befriended.

He spends much of his time listening to her stories of their family and ancestors and a lost treasure that he decides he must recover.

“The River at Green Knowe” by Lucy M. Boston is a journey through the country of innocence and unlimited imagination. The leads in the novel are Miss Sybilla Bun an eater, cook and provider of food and an archeologist named Dr. Maud Biggin that rent the ancient Green Knowe property for the summer.

They invite Ping and Oskar who are two displaced children to live with them alongside Ida who is Maud’s niece. The house on the property is safe from the elements but the surrounding lands are regularly flooded by the river. As such, there are hardly any factories or houses in the area.

The surrounding lands are pure and idyllic and as such there is no threat of danger from the environment or the people. It is only from the adventures they decide to embark on that they get their urgency and spice of life.
The children live innocent lives venturing out on the water whenever they want to go on some interesting adventures where they discover giants, flying horses, a hermit and an aggressive owl.