H. E. Bates was born on 16 May 1905 in Rushden, Northamptonshire, and educated at Kettering Grammar School. After leaving school, he worked as a reporter and a warehouse clerk. Many of his stories depict life in the rural Midlands of England, particularly his native Northamptonshire. Bates was partial to taking long walks around the Northamptonshire countryside and this often provided the inspiration for his stories. Bates was a great lover of the countryside and this was exemplified in two volumes of essays entitled Through the Woods and Down the River. Both have been reprinted numerous times. He discarded his first novel, written when he was in his late teens, but his second, and the first one to be published, The Two Sisters, was inspired by one of his midnight walks, which took him to the small village of Farndish. There, late at night, he saw a light burning in a cottage window and it was this that triggered the story.[1] At this time he was working briefly for the local newspaper in Wellingborough, a job which he hated, and then later at a local shoe-making warehouse, where he had time to write; in fact the whole of this first novel was written there. This was sent to, and rejected by, eight or nine publishers [2] until Jonathan Cape accepted it on the advice of its highly respected Reader, Edward Garnett. Bates was then twenty years old. More novels, collections of short stories, essays, and articles followed, but did not pay well.