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| H W
Freeman |
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The son of a schoolmaster, Harold Webber 'Jack' Freeman
was born in Ilford, Essex in 1899. He won a scholarship from the
City of London school to Christ Church College, Oxford where he read
classics, narrowly missing a double first class degree. His studies
were interrupted by service with the Somerset Light Infantry in France
at the close of the First World War.
Following Oxford and a period of teaching, Freeman settled into a
life of European travel and writing. In 1928, the novel he wrote
in a Florence garret, Joseph
and his Brethren, was published by Chatto & Windus.
This story of a Suffolk farming family became a main selection of
the American Book of the Month club, establishing Freeman's
reputation.
Freeman had five more novels published during the 1930s,
followed by Chaffinch's in 1941. This was just after he was married
to Elisabeth 'Betty' Bödecker, a German costume
designer for the theatre who had worked in Berlin, Paris and London.
They settled at the village of Offton, seven miles west of Ipswich
in Suffolk where Freeman's parents had bought a sixteenth-century
house and a couple of acres of ground.
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After the war, Freeman had two novels and a travel book published.
He and Betty remained at Offton, enthusiastically growing vegetables
and fruit and continuing their annual travels in Europe. They died
within three months of each other in 1994.
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Books
Joseph
and his Brethren, Chatto & Windus, 1928, 2003
Down in the Valley,Chatto & Windus, 1930, 2005
Fathers of their People, Chatto & Windus, 1932
Pond Hall’s Progress, Chatto & Windus, 1933
Hester & her Family, Chatto & Windus, 1935
Andrew to the Lions, Chatto & Windus, 1938
Chaffinch’s,
Chatto & Windus, 1941, 2001
Blenheim Orange, Victor Gollancz, 1949
The Poor Scholar’s Tale, Chapman & Hall, 1955
Round the Island, Chapman & Hall, 1956
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