Series: Zenith

Donkey Boy (1952) was the second entry in Henry Williamson's fifteen-volume A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlightspanning the years from the late Victorian period to the Second World War. It tells of Richard Maddison's first-born Phillip, nicknamed 'donkey boy' because his life was saved in infancy by being fed with ass's milk. The boy grows up in the Edwardian era, something of a misfit, at odds with his father.

'With extraordinary skill and precision [Williamson] rebuilds the scenery of the past... [he] seems to be engaged in a thriller whose instalments can be relied on to animate a whole section of social history.' Spectator
'Williamson's style is romantic, though rarely sentimental, and his sensuous response to nature is fresh and surprising.' Anthony Burgess, Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English since 1939

Dream of Fair Women

by Henry Williamson

Published December 1933

This is the third novel in Henry Williamson's Flax of Dream sequence. Willie Maddison has returned from the Great War and chooses to live a recluse-like existence in a remote Devon cottage; he cares for injured animals and writes. This abruptly changes when Evelyn Fairfax enters his life. Their affair should have been therapeutic, helping to anaesthetize the horrors of war, but complications develop when Willie follows Evelyn back to Folkestone where she has a husband, a young daughter, many besotted admires, and a bad reputation.

The four novels comprising the Flax of Dream sequence are: The Beautiful Years, Dandelion Days, The Dream of Fair Women and The Pathway. It has been said, 'together they must be regarded as one of the major works in English fiction of the day . . . in every respect a wonderful achievement.' Faber Finds is proud to be reissuing them.

Beautiful Years

by Henry Williamson

Published May 1967

The Beautiful Years is a tender evocation of West Country childhood in the golden years before the First World War. It is also the first volume in Henry Williamson's tetralogy The Flax of Dream. All four volumes - The Beautiful Years, Dandelion Days, The Dream of Fair Women and The Pathway - are being reissued in Faber Finds, and together they make up the life story of Willie Maddison.

The Flax of Dream is one of the major literary achievements of the twentieth century.

The Pathway

by Henry Williamson

Published July 1969

The Pathway is the fourth and concluding volume in Henry Williamson's Flax of Dream sequence.
Willie Maddison fought in the First World War, and suffered fully its tragedies. Now he returns to his beloved Devon, to the wind-swept Taw estuary, with its swift alternation of sun and rain, its bird-filled saltmarshes and marram-covered sandhills. He comes here to live out, and try to express in writing, insights that have taken shape from his boyhood and wartime experience.

The Flax of Dream is a masterpiece. The four novels that comprise it have been reissued in Faber Finds: The Beautiful Years, Dandelion Days, The Dream of Fair Women and The Pathway.

Dandelion Days

by Henry Williamson

Published December 1932

Dandelion Days is the second novel in The Flax of Dream tetralogy describing the life of Willie Maddison. This volume continues the story of Willie's boyhood with escapades at school and idyllic adventures in the countryside. The moving, at times almost Arcadian account, of youth before the Great War is shattered at the end when we learn 10943 Private W. B. Maddison has enlisted and is serving in a territorial Infantry Battalion in the Ypres Salient.

'Gets as near to the heart of a boy as anything I have read for many years. Willie Maddison is a person and a representative. His history is beautiful - and important.' The Observer

Faber Finds is reissuing the four titles in The Flax of Dream sequence: The Beautiful Years, Dandelion Days, The Dream of Fair Women and The Pathway.