It was his first novel, though he had published a one-act play The Last Bread earlier that year.

The book was inspired by one of his midnight walks, which took him to the small village of Farndish in Bedfordshire.

There, late at night, he saw a light burning in a cottage window and it was this that triggered the story.

It was rejected by nine publishers [2] before being accepted by Jonathan Cape at the recommendation of Edward Garnett, who also wrote an introduction to the novel[3] Jenny and her younger sister Tessie live in an isolated farmhouse with their recently widowed and tyrannical father Jacob and their two brothers Jim and Luke.

Then an unexpected visitor Michael Winter breaks into their quiet lives; both sisters falling in love with him.