The most famous legacy of J. L. Carr is his short pastoral novel A Month in the Country. It transports us to Yorkshire and the year 1920. There we meet our protagonist, an art restorer who has transplanted himself from London to the rural idyll of Oxgodby. He is employed to uncover a long-lost church mural and, perhaps, to recuperate from the twin traumas of the trenches and estrangement. The summer bucolic surrounds in which he finds himself are utterly intoxicating, both for him and the reader. It’s a book rich in symbolism—subtle enough to gratify attentive readers without being obscure or esoteric. Carr paints a rich but economical portrait of his principal characters, whose petty but personal tragedies can’t help but leave us a little melancholic by the story’s end. Overall, then, this is a quick read whose pleasant summer idyll belies a real emotional punch. A Month in the Country was published by the Folio Society in 1999, which is the edition I will review here.
The book’s outward presentation is simple but charming. Within the plain buff slipcase is a book quarter-bound in brown cloth over paper sides. Those sides are printed in brown with an engraving (the same image front and back) that also serves as the book’s frontispiece. The title and author’s name are blocked in gilt on the spine. Rounding out the exterior design is a sewn binding with striped end bands, and orange-brown end papers.
Within we find 121 pages of Balmoral Wove paper. This is a quite delightful ivory-coloured paper with a smooth surface and decent weight. The off-white colouring, besides being pleasant in its own right, seems fitting for the book’s 1920s sepia-tinted setting. Also appropriate is the choice of typeface: Caslon, that most English of faces. The book is too short to have chapters but is divided into sections that each begin with a drop cap for a bit of typographic spice in an otherwise quite austere presentation. The book was typeset by Gloucester Typesetting Services and printed at St Edmundsbury Press in England.
Illustrations have been furnished by Ian Stephens in the form of eight wood engravings, including a frontispiece that also features on the book’s boards. This is a fairly generous offering for a book of scarcely more than a hundred pages. Stephens is a master at capturing rural charms in wood and his talents have been put to good use here.
Ronald Blythe was an inspired choice to write the introduction for this edition and his text is every bit as economical as the book. He gives us enough of a glimpse of the pleasures to come, all while giving almost nothing away. Overall, a very skillfully crafted introduction.
In sum, this edition has very much going for it, both in content and in form. The collision of enthralling bucolic ecstasy with petty but moving personal drama is quite enthralling. The book is readily available at a modest price point on the secondary market—I paid £12 for my copy. At this price it’s easy to recommend. ■
Where to buy
You can search for and buy this edition on: eBay US*, eBay UK*, AbeBooks US*, or AbeBooks UK*.
Or browse more generally for Folio Society books at:
eBay US*, eBay UK*, AbeBooks US*, or AbeBooks UK*.
* These are affiliate links. Buying a book via one of these links produces a modest revenue for this site at no additional cost to you. Any revenue thus generated is recycled into supporting the activities of this site.
Miscellaneous
This edition of the book was brought to my attention by wcarter’s pictoral review at the Folio Society Devotees forum.
Also at the Folio Society Devotees forum is a thread where several users (including yours truly) picked this book as their archetypal ‘book of summer’.
The Ubiquitous Book blog 