Lucy Maria Boston (née Wood; 10 December 1892 – 25 May 1990) was an English novelist who wrote for children and adults, publishing her work entirely after the age of 60.
The setting is Green Knowe, an old country manor house based on Boston's Cambridgeshire home at Hemingford Grey.
In her memoir, Perverse and Foolish, she describes life in an affluent middle class Victorian family of committed Wesleyans.
As evidence of James Wood's eccentricity and religious fervour Lucy described the interior of the house he bought and had decorated in preparation for his marriage and the family he intended to raise there.
Recesses in the walls were divided by wooden arcades of the Moorish onion shape and there were many beautiful objects made of brass, as well as other rarities displayed in a glass-fronted cupboard.
Her father was a passionate man with an appreciation of the aesthetic side of life, albeit channelled largely through his religious convictions, whereas her mother was devout and abstemious.
Following the failure of the marriage in 1935 Lucy travelled in France, Italy, Austria and Hungary, visiting the musical capitals of Europe.
Hearing that a house was for sale in the nearby village of Hemingford Grey, Lucy remembered that in 1915 she had glimpsed from the river a seemingly derelict farmhouse.
She jumped to the conclusion that this must be the house for sale, drove out to Hemingford Grey in a taxi, knocked at the door and announced to the owners that she would be interested in buying it.
Another autobiographical memoir, Memory in a House, describes her life after moving to Hemingford Grey, including the renovation and restoration of The Manor.
[5] This book, published before Perverse and Foolish and written when Boston was eighty-one, can be described as an extended love letter to the house.
Peter Boston drew the book jacket for Yew Hall and went on to illustrate her children's stories with pictures depicting aspects of the house and gardens, and many of the items contained therein.
[6] Boston lived at The Manor for almost 50 years, in which time she created a romantic garden and wrote all her children's books.
Her son Peter, an architect and illustrator, lived in the Manor at Hemingford Grey (Green Knowe) with his wife Diana until his death, in November 1999.
The existence of the patchworks was scarcely known until 1976, when the conductor and keyboard player, Christopher Hogwood, who was a friend, arranged an exhibition of them at the King's Lynn Festival.
A book of poetry, titled Time Is Undone: Twenty-Five Poems by Lucy M. Boston was published in 1977 in a limited run of 750 copies.