As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning [Large Print] [Hardcover]

Laurie Lee (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 29, 1979

It was 1934 and a young man walked to London from the security of the Cotswolds to make his fortune. He was to live by playing the violin and by labouring on a London building site. Then, knowing one Spanish phrase, he decided to see Spain. For a year he tramped through a country in which the signs of impending civil war were clearly visible. Thirty years later Laurie Lee captured the atmosphere of the Spain he saw with all the freshness and beauty of a young man's vision, creating a lyrical and lucid picture of the beautiful and violent country that was to involve him inextricably.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Originally published in 1969, Lee's charming account of his travels in Spain in 1935 became almost as popular as his delightful Cider with Rosie. This fussily illustrated edition is an insult to an enjoyable prose work by a distinguished poet. Rather than eliciting the Spain that Lee visited, these old-fashioned illustrations from a variety of sources detract from a text that is rendered unreadable by a 34-pica measure, surmounted by running headlines (finically set in caps and italic initial caps), topped by a double line that serves as "walking" surface for a little man with stick (presumably representing the author) who promenades remorselessly across the page, pica by pica, as the reader progresses with the story. Each color illustration is surrounded by a white mat-like area enclosed, in turn, by a triple-rule frame set against a tan backgrounda tacky effect. The paperback reprint of the original edition is available for those who prefer unencumbered reading. October 28
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Twenty years before Jack Kerouac set off On the Road, Lee (A Moment of War, Audio Reviews, LJ 3/15/94) left the safety of his rural English home and embarked on a wondrous adventure. Supporting himself by playing the violin, the 20-year-old Lee made his way to London and then to Spain, where he spent a year wandering across the countryside on foot. Eventually Lee encountered the undercurrents of civil war and found himself hopelessly entangled. Using the highly polished wordsmithing tools he has developed as a poet, Lee masterfully evokes the ambience and tension of Europe on the eve of World War II. Lee's narration is like curling up on one's grandfather's lap and listening to stories of being attacked by wolves, hounded by the police, romanced by idealism, and seduced by beauty. This work is a fine nonfiction complement to Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. Highly recommended.
Ray Vignovich, West Des Moines P.L., Ia.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 312 pages
• Publisher: C.Chivers; Large type edition edition (March 29, 1979)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0859974049
• ISBN-13: 978-0859974042
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars So Much He Loved Wandering, January 1, 2003

By 

Gussie Fink-Nottle (California, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (Hardcover)

"As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning" [1], author Laurie Lee recounted his first sojourn away from home. At age 19, our narrator-biographer, walked out of his village at Stroud, Gloucestershire, and headed toward London. As Lee himself recalled, he was 'still soft at the edges' when he said farewell to his mother (a poignant scene in the opening chapter). All he had with him that Sunday morning in June 1934 was 'a small rolled-up tent, a violin in a blanket, a change of clothes, a tin of treacle biscuits, and some cheese.'

After nearly a year of living and working in London as a cement laborer, Lee decided it was time to move on. He bought a one-way ticket and sailed to Spain. He settled for Spain because he had had an introduction to Spanish. All he could speak then, Lee admitted, was only one Spanish phrase: 'Will you please give me a glass of water?'

In July 1935, Laurie Lee landed in northwestern Spain. For many months he roamed the exotic and history-filled landscape, living off his music and the kindness of the people he came to love. From Vigo, he wandered southward through the New Castile region (Segovia, Madrid, Toledo). By December, he came to the coastal region of Andalusia (Cordova, Seville, Granada). There, Lee holed up at a Castillo hotel until the outbreak of the civil war in July 1936.

This author's second autobiographical sketch could have been subtitled "From Spain With Love." His inimitable poetic description of the Spanish landscape and its inhabitants is sensual as it is lyrical. The warmth and beauty of this passage [no pun], for example, undulates this reviewer's reveries, not of memories but of what has never been: 'When twilight came I slept where I was, on the shore or some rock-strewn headland, and woke to the copper glow of the rising sun coming slowly across the sea. Mornings were pure resurrection, which I could watch sitting up, still wrapped like a corpse in my blanket, seeing the blood-warm light soak back into the Sierras, slowing re-animating their ash-grey cheeks, and feeling the cold of the ground drain away beneath me as the sunrise reached my body.'

Lee's "As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning" and its third autobiograhy "A Moment In War" have had a farther reach than any of his other celebrated works. These writings have been adapted to music to which Charles Baudelaire could only spoke of metaphorically. In June of 2002, the Allegri String Quartet in The Salisbury Festival (UK) premiered "A Walk Into War." A musical piece which the quartet had commissioned based on the two latter biographies.

The author once wrote that autobiography is 'a celebration of life and an attempt to hoard its sensations...trophies snatched from the dark... to praise the life I'd had and so preserve it, and to live again both the good and the bad'. By all measures he had not done badly. He was and is the one modern author whose memoirs have transcended into the realms of music and visual arts ('Cider With Rosie', a 1998 film by John Mortimer).

1] Laurie Lee's autobiographical trilogy - Book 1:"Cider with Rosie" (1959); Book 2:"As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning" (1969); and Book 3: "A Moment of War" (1991).

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magical., March 10, 2000

By 

Sarah Reid (London, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (Hardcover)

His admirers have commented, variously, that Laurie Lee 'writes like an angel', a 'poet, whose prose is quick and bright as a snake'. For another writer such praise might seem lavish but not for Laurie Lee. He writes beautifully, producing books that electrify and enchant, exhilarate and mesmerise. 'As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning' is the second volume of a marvellous trilogy. Part autobiography, part evocation of all the bewilderment and uncertainty of the 1930's, it is characterized by the lyricism of its poet author. Leaving his home in the Cotswolds, the young Lee walks to London in 'high, sulky Summer' with high hopes of making his fortune. He settles, happily enough, in a London boarding house with an engagingly eccentric Irish Cockney family, and supports himself by labouring on a building site and by playing the violin. In a life of opposites, we are treated to a first-hand account of the ugliness and tension of the disputes between employees and unions. In the dawn of the first, disquieting signs of dissatisfaction - a feeling in the 30's that led inexorably to the policy of Appeasement, and thus to war - we see through the eyes of a naive adolescent. It is this naivete, coupled with the glorious spontaneity that floods this book, which leads him to Spain. Knowing approximately one Spanish phrase, Lee decides to see Spain and so begins the love affair wtih a country that was to obsess him for the rest of his life. Never has Spain been so vividly painted. From the scorching heat and vivid, voluptous women of Vigo, to the false glamour and dilapidation of Madrid, Laurie Lee writes with a passion to match his captivation. An absolutely unforgettable book with a host of sharply drawn characters. From the sexily confident child, Patsy, to beautiful Cleo, Philip with his 'fine hungry face and a shock of thick obsidian curls' Lee sketches the myriad individuals he meets with a lucidity that stamps them in our minds forever. Who can read this novel and not dream wistfully of the days when cars were a rarity in our country. Or of a Spain unscarred by war, where the laundered, lacy dolls modestly avert their eyes from the gaze of the young men 'pocket dandies, carefully buttoned in spite of the heat.' Truly a book to treasure forever.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Memorable, January 2, 2002

By 

C. Ebeling "ctlpareader" (PA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: As I walked out one midsummer morning (Mass Market Paperback)

It's a shame that this fine book is not in print. Those going after used editions--and you should--are encouraged to look for the 1985 reprint stunningly illustrated with classic paintings of Spanish life. But back to why you want to read this: in 1934, a young, naive Englishman who had never been out of his rural neighborhood packed up his violin and went walking, first to London, a hundred miles east and then via boat to Spain where he walked from Vigo in the north down to the southern coast. I'm having trouble shelving the book: is it a straight memoir? Certainly it is very much about the writer's encounter with the world at a historically significant time and about his own growth process. Or is it a travelogue? It is a very accurate account of the unique Spanish culture and countryside. Although written more than 30 years after the actual experience, Lee's account conveys a fresh sense of wonder and discovery and resists overlaying too much foreshadowing and hindsight. His style is lyrical, vivid as the blue Spanish sky and honest. He is refreshingly free of nationalism and prejudice.