The rural fiction of S. C. Nethersole - Kent Archive Lunchtime Talks

About

Susie Colyer Nethersole (1869-1956) was the author of eight novels set in East Kent and was one of the first authors signed by Mills and Boon in 1908. This talk will explore her works and consider the ways in which she wrote about the Kentish landscape. Although born into a farming family, Nethersole admitted that she had 'never actually gone out with the hoe herself'; however, her attention to detail is finely observed, with the colours of the fields, the flowers, the seasons and the weather creating a rich tableau which her characters inhabit. As one reviewer wrote: 'here are people who are, bone and flesh, farming folk, in a countryside that is as freshly English as they are'. Nevertheless, her stories are not chocolate-boxy, but grittily realistic.

Rural life is tough, and characters struggle as well as thrive, as modernity threatens their traditions. For Nethersole this was her world, albeit often as an observer, but that world could also be grey and monotonous, and it is her 'warts and all' portrayal of Kent's rural past that marks her out as more than just a writer of romance fiction.