Lucy M. Boston

1 universe Last reviewed 2026-09-14

Lucy Maria Boston was born December 10, 1892, in Southport, Lancashire, England, the fifth of six children in an affluent, devoutly Wesleyan family; her father James Wood was an engineer and former mayor. After her father's death when she was six, the family's circumstances changed considerably. She attended school near Arnside, Westmorland, completed her education at a finishing school in Paris, and began studying English at Somerville College, Oxford, in 1914, but left after her first year to serve as a volunteer nurse during the First World War. She was also a trained artist, having studied painting in Vienna, and created more than twenty patchwork pieces over her lifetime. Boston began her publishing career unusually late, at age sixty, with her first novel Yew Hall (1954). She is best remembered for the Green Knowe series, six children's fantasy novels published between 1954 and 1976 and set in a manor house modeled on her own home in Hemingford Grey, Cambridgeshire. In 1961 she won the Carnegie Medal for A Stranger at Green Knowe, honoring the year's best British children's book. Boston died May 25, 1990, at age ninety-seven, in Hemingford Grey, and was buried in the nearby churchyard of Hemingford Abbots.

Universe(s)

Books

• The Children of Green Knowe (1954) · Green Knowe Core Canon
• The Chimneys of Green Knowe (1958) · Green Knowe Core Canon
• The River at Green Knowe (1959) · Green Knowe Core Canon
• A Stranger at Green Knowe (1961) · Green Knowe Core Canon
• An Enemy at Green Knowe (1964) · Green Knowe Core Canon
• The Stones of Green Knowe (1976) · Green Knowe Core Canon

Aggregate across all universes

• Total Core Canon books across all universes: 6 books
• Award recognitions across all universes: 0 (None recorded)

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