Lydia – shy, sheltered, beautiful and just 19 – glides into Evensford one wintry day, stirring up feeling amongst the town’s young men. But it is the young Mr Richardson that she befriends. As winter turns to drowsy summer, his world becomes a wondrous place, full only of Lydia; but a change comes over the once retiring girl as she discovers the effect she has on other men. As his closest friends fall under her spell, the love Richardson feels for Lydia becomes tangled with jealousy and resentment, a rift that may never be repaired.

First published in 1952, Love for Lydia is a poignant look at love through the eyes of a boy growing up. Set amidst the hazy beauty of the English countryside and the crumbling splendour of the British upper classes, Bates demonstrates his ability to capture the complexities of human character, his remarkable talent for contrasting romance against stark reality, and the innocence, joy and sadness of young love.

Includes an introduction by Joanna Briscoe which opens:

“If, as a smitten fifteen year old, I’d known that one day I would be asked to write an introduction to Love for Lydia, my excitement would have known no limits. It was, and remains, one of my favourite novels.

This is a work that cannot fail to intrigue, delight and influence; and, if caught at the right time, to make its mark on the mind. It is also one that, read as a teenager trying to write, was influential to me as a novelist in ways I have only just fathomed. Characters who are not what they seem have always fascinated me, and I now wonder whether the contradictory Lydia wormed her way into my psyche without me realising. Anyone who is reading the novel for the first time is to be envied .... Love for Lydia is so exquisitely written, so accurate on both the glorious and dangerous aspects of obsessive love, and so precise in its portrait of a time and place, it seems to me to be timeless.”