KENT ARCHIVES AND LOCAL HISTORY SERVICE PRESENTS
Image: a tinted postcard of the Parish Hall at Barham. Rural Kentish communities such as this are central to the literary works of S. C. Nethersole
Published by J. G. Charlton, Photographer, Canterbury. Postmark dated 1909.
‘I looked at the grey of it then, I lived in the grey of it now’:
The rural fiction of S. C. Nethersole
A talk by Dr Michelle Crowther
(Canterbury Christ Church University)
Kent History and Library Centre,
Maidstone, ME14 1LQ
Monday 13 July 2026
1–2PM
ADMISSION: FREE
For further information and to reserve a seat
Call: 03000 420673
Email: archives@kent.gov.uk
Kent Archives
Accredited Archive Service
KENT ARCHIVES AND LOCAL HISTORY SERVICE PRESENTS
‘I looked at the grey of it then, I lived in the grey of it now’:
The rural fiction of S. C. Nethersole
A talk by Dr Michelle Crowther
(Canterbury Christ Church University)
Susie Colyer Nethersole (1869–1956) was the author of eight novels set in East Kent and was one of the first authors signed by Mills and Boon in 1908. This talk will explore her works and consider the ways in which she wrote about the Kentish landscape. Although born into a farming family, Nethersole admitted that she had ‘never actually gone out with the hoe herself’; however, her attention to detail is finely observed, with the colours of the fields, the flowers, the seasons and the weather creating a rich tableau which her characters inhabit. As one reviewer wrote: ‘here are people who are, bone and flesh, farming folk, in a countryside that is as freshly English as they are’. Nevertheless, her stories are not chocolate-boxy, but grittily realistic. Rural life is tough, and characters struggle as well as thrive, as modernity threatens their traditions. For Nethersole this was her world, albeit often as an observer, but that world could also be grey and monotonous, and it is her ‘warts and all’ portrayal of Kent’s rural past that marks her out as more than just a writer of romance fiction.
Dr Michelle Crowther is an Academic Librarian at Canterbury Christ Church University and a co-lead of the Kent Maps Online project. Her doctoral thesis explores the works of the Persistent Scribblers Society, a Canterbury-based manuscript magazine society from the 1870s. Her research interests include Victorian and Edwardian literature, manuscript magazines, biography, rural writers, and nineteenth century Canterbury.
For further information and to reserve a seat
Call: 03000 420673
Email: archives@kent.gov.uk