[2] The novel follows the childhood of Laura Timmins in the small rural northern Oxfordshire hamlet of Lark Rise and the surrounding countryside.

[2] It is a part-lyrical, part-documentary portrait of the actual hamlet, Juniper Hill, where the author was born.

According to Richard Mabey in his 2014 book Dreams of the Good Life, the author "tells most of the story as a reminiscing adult, but presents Laura's view when she wants to lighten the tone of an example, or show it through the vivid, unmediated vision of a girl.

Sometimes the viewpoint of adult and child are deliberately played against one another, with a kind of wry dramatic irony".

[4] The novel is neither a straight memoir nor an objective social history, but an imaginary reconstruction of what life felt like to a growing country child in the last years of the 19th century.