Country Moods and Tenses : The Grammar of Country Life

'. . . let the townsman say what he will, country life has more variety . . .' A contemporary of Cecil Beaton, Siegfried Sassoon and Rex Whistler, Edith Olivier is best known for her first book, the novella, The Love Child but was the author of a variety of both fiction and non-fiction, as well as becoming the mayor of Wilton, Wiltshire, in 1939. In this biographical memoir, written during the Second World War and subtitled 'A Non-Grammarian's Chapbook', Olivier takes the five grammatical moods - infinitive, imperative, indicative, subjunctive and conditional - and uses them to describe village and country life in her beloved Wiltshire as it was in 1941, the year of first publication. Covering a range of topics - from the folklore and traditions of the local area, to the weather and landscape itself - Country Moods and Tenses captures a moment and describes a world which has, in many ways, been lost to us.