Flax of Dream – serie

The Beautiful Years is a tender evocation of West Country childhood in the golden years before the First World War. It is also the first volume in Henry Williamson's tetralogy The Flax of Dream. All four volumes - The Beautiful Years, Dandelion Days, The Dream of Fair Women and The Pathway - are being reissued in Faber Finds, and together they make up the life story of Willie Maddison.The Flax of Dream is one of the major literary achievements of the twentieth century.

Dandelion Days is the second novel in The Flax of Dream tetralogy describing the life of Willie Maddison. This volume continues the story of Willie's boyhood with escapades at school and idyllic adventures in the countryside. The moving, at times almost Arcadian account, of youth before the Great War is shattered at the end when we learn 10943 Private W. B. Maddison has enlisted and is serving in a territorial Infantry Battalion in the Ypres Salient.'Gets as near to the heart of a boy as anything I have read for many years. Willie Maddison is a person and a representative. His history is beautiful - and important.' The Observer Faber Finds is reissuing the four titles in The Flax of Dream sequence: The Beautiful Years, Dandelion Days, The Dream of Fair Women and The Pathway.

This is the third novel in Henry Williamson's Flax of Dream sequence. Willie Maddison has returned from the Great War and chooses to live a recluse-like existence in a remote Devon cottage; he cares for injured animals and writes. This abruptly changes when Evelyn Fairfax enters his life. Their affair should have been therapeutic, helping to anaesthetize the horrors of war, but complications develop when Willie follows Evelyn back to Folkestone where she has a husband, a young daughter, many besotted admires, and a bad reputation.The four novels comprising the Flax of Dream sequence are: The Beautiful Years, Dandelion Days, The Dream of Fair Women and The Pathway. It has been said, 'together they must be regarded as one of the major works in English fiction of the day . . . in every respect a wonderful achievement.' Faber Finds is proud to be reissuing them.