The Glad Summer

UK Publisher: Sampson Low, Marston and Co. Ltd. (London). First published 1951

When Nicholas Harbourne unexpectedly inherited the Harbourne baronetcy and fortune he decided to stay incognito among his tenants to learn to know them and to discover how they lived - and so met the lovely Joanne, who was valiantly running her farm under difficulties not of her own making.

As the story progresses we meet Aunt Jemima and little Priscilla, who take Nicholas to their hearts for the man he is; the dissolute Lord Wolverton, who hates him for the same reason and is trying to blackmail Joanne into marriage; Bill the carter; George the ploughman; Joe the cowman; and other characters who live in Sussex that Jeffery Farnol loves.

How Nicholas makes his friends' lives happier and fuller - and his own at the same time, how he works as a handyman on Joanne's farm, how he outwits and outfights the scheming Wolverton, how at the end of that "glad summer" he learns to say the words which are the key to his and Joanne's happiness, and how he says them - and where - is unfolded smoothly, and yet on occasion unexpectedly, in the inimitable Farnol style which makes you feel you are living in the story and that the characters are people you know personally.

"The Glad Summer" is set in the early years of Queen Victoria' reign when life moved more slowly, but the main desire in people's hearts was the same as it is today - to live fully and in peace and happiness.