A Norfolk Author

I can't remember where I bought "No Halt at Sunset; The Diary of a Housewife" but I know the second of the two books.......... "Wheelbarrow Farm" came from Wigtown,  Scotland's Book Town, and I remember being excited to find it (this was before Amazon and Abebooks)

Elizabeth Harland wrote several books between 1936 and 1955 as well as running a farm. No Halt at Sunset was published in 1951 and is written in diary form covering the part of 1949 and 1950 when rationing was still in force it is about their move to a smallholding which she and her husband hoped to run commercially.

 

 

A Man's work ends at set of sun, A Woman's work is never done

 

 The dust jacket on my copy of Wheelbarrow Farm is very tatty, 

 

unfortunately the back is even worse so that a lot of her biographical details are missing.

She was born in Norfolk in 1904, started writing  early and got her first book published in 1936. Wheelbarrow Farm was published in 1954. There's no mention of whereabouts the farm she was running in the first book actually was....she called it Silford, but I found a note that said it was Sparham Hall N.W of Norwich.

Wheelbarrow Farm might be about the same farm but it's written as a story rather than a diary.

 

I found that her first book "Farmer's Girl" written during the war was well known in the US and there is a review in the New York Times.

Also this....................

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.

Farmers Girl was republished in the US as recently as 2021.

I couldn't find out anything else about her, so I think that was a pen name.

Back Tomorrow

Sue