Joseph and His Brethren. Dieser Artikel ist nicht verfügbar.Joseph and His Brethren

As the novel follows the various fortunes and misfortunes of Benjamin and his sons through the late 19th Century, it becomes clear that they each possess a passion for direct contact with the land they farm. This passion dominates all aspects of their existence and inextricably ties them to Crakenhill. It is only when their lives are altered by the arrival of a young housekeeper that their future becomes uncertain. It was this novel, which established H W Freeman's reputation as a writer in Britain and America. It became a main selection of the American Book of the Month club in 1929.

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' Bodecker, 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.