According to the Irish Examiner, the title comes from a lyric in the Arthur Colahan song "Galway Bay", which was popularized by American singer Bing Crosby in a 1947 recording.

[2] London was a dangerous place to live during World War II, and many children were evacuated to Ireland or the United States.

Elizabeth White, an only child, is sent to live with her mother's childhood friend and her large and bustling family, the O'Connors, in Ireland.

Kenny notes that Binchy was comfortable using young girls as main characters in her early novels as she had "observed children closely" while working as a teacher, and had become aware "how well a child can 'carry' a narrative".

In this novel, Binchy charts the course of a friendship from ages 10 to 30,[4] "from idyllic childhood to turbulent adulthood",[5] with each girl offering support to the other through letters and visits.

[7] Binchy wrote Light a Penny Candle, her first novel, at the urging of her agent, who recommended that she choose as a topic that was familiar to her.

[8] Binchy's agent typed the manuscript herself and sold it to Rosemary Cheetham, the fiction editor at MacDonalds Publishers, for £5,000.

[5] In a contemporary review, Dennis Drabelle of The Washington Post wrote that although it is Binchy's first novel, "its narrative brio seems the work of a veteran".

[13] Sherryl Connelly of the Akron Beacon Journal enthused, "Maeve Binchy has written a first novel that could be mistaken for life.

The ordinariness of the book's characters, the accuracy of the telling and the honesty of its outcome pay homage to reality by making it readable.

[4] Describing the novel as 542 pages of "good characterization, flowing dialogue and a realistic plot", a Santa Cruz Sentinel review augured that "This first effort ought to establish [Binchy's] credibility as a writer of extraordinary insight and craft".