Cider with Rosie is a 1959 book by Laurie Lee (published in the US as Edge of Day: Boyhood in the West of England, 1960). It is the first book of a trilogy that continues with As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969) and A Moment of War (1991). It has sold over six million copies worldwide.
The novel is an account of Lee's childhood in the village of Slad, Gloucestershire, England, in the period soon after the First World War. It chronicles the traditional village life which disappeared with the advent of new developments, such as the coming of the motor car and relates the experiences of childhood seen from many years later. The identity of Rosie was revealed years later to be Lee's distant cousin Rosalind Buckland.
Summary
Rather than follow strict chronological order, Lee divided the book into thematic chapters, as follows: First Light describes Laurie arriving with his mother and the rest of the family at a cottage in the Cotswolds village of Slad, Gloucestershire. The children gorge themselves on berries and bread as their harassed mother tries to get the cottage and the furniture into some kind of order. The house relies on a small wood-fire for the cooking and a hand pump in the scullery for its water. They are visited by a man in uniform who is sleeping out in the surrounding woods – he visits them in the mornings for food and to dry out his damp clothes. He is finally taken off by men in uniform as a deserter. The chapter ends with the villagers riotously celebrating the end of the Great War. First Names describes Laurie still sleeping in his mother's bed until he is forced out of it by his younger brother, Tony, and made to sleep with the two elder boys. As he grows older, he starts to recognise the villagers as individuals: Cabbage-Stump Charlie, the local bruiser; Albert the Devil, a deaf mute beggar; and Percy-from-Painswick, a clown and ragged dandy who likes to seduce the girls with his soft tongue. Because of its location, the cottage is in the path of the floods that flow into the valley, and Laurie and his family have to go outside to clear the storm drain every time there is a heavy downpour, though even this sometimes fails to stop the sludge despoiling their kitchen. Village School
The female teacher is called Crabby B, because of her predilection for suddenly hitting out at the boys for no apparent reason. She meets her match in Spadge Hopkins, a burly local farmer's boy, who leaves the classroom one day after placing her on top of one of the cupboards. She is replaced by Miss Wardley from Birmingham, who "wore sharp glass jewellery" and imposes discipline that is "looser but stronger". The Kitchen This chapter describes the Lees' domestic life. At the beginning Lee makes a reference to his father, who had abandoned them, saying that he and his brothers never knew any male authority. After working in the Army Pay Corps their father entered the Civil Service and settled in London for good. As Lee says,