Joseph Lloyd Carr (20 May 1912 – 26 February 1994), known as "Jim" or "James", was an English novelist (his most notable novel being A Month in the Country), cartographer, lexicographer, publisher, and teacher.

Biography

thumb|400px|right|A literary map of Yorkshire by Carr

Carr was born in Carlton Miniott in the North Riding of Yorkshire, next to Thirsk railway station, into a Wesleyan Methodist family. His father Joseph, the eldest of 12 children of a tenant farmer, went to work for the railways, eventually becoming a station master then traffic controller for the North Eastern Railway. Carr was given the same Christian name as his father and the middle name Lloyd, after David Lloyd George, the Liberal Chancellor of the Exchequer and subsequent Prime Minister. He adopted the names Jim and James in adulthood. His brother Raymond, who was also a station master, and other members of his family called him Lloyd. but when the family moved to Sherburn-in-Elmet when he was about 9 years old, the school in the village was poorly run and he learned little. Carr failed the county examination to gain entry to Tadcaster Grammar School, so at the age of 13 his parents enrolled him at Castleford Secondary School as a fee-paying student. After passing his school certificate examination he stayed on for a year in the sixth form and applied for admission to a teachers' training college, because the local authority would pay his fees. However, when he was interviewed at Goldsmiths' College, London, he was asked why he wanted to be a teacher. Carr answered: "Because it leaves so much time for other pursuits." He was not accepted. Over forty years later, after his novel The Harpole Report had become a critical and popular success, he was invited to give a talk at Goldsmiths'. He replied that the college had had its chance of being addressed by him. taken to an extreme as the title implies. He then successfully applied to Dudley Training College for Teachers and graduated after two years in 1933 with a Certificate in Education. Carr spent his first two years as a teacher at a school in Bitterne, Hampshire before returning to the Midlands to teach in Birmingham. In 1938 he spent a school year as an exchange teacher in Huron, South Dakota, in the Great Plains. Much of the year was a struggle to survive in a strangely different culture; his British salary converted into dollars was pitifully inadequate to meet the American cost of living. and served as an intelligence officer for squadrons at RAF bases in Kent, Norfolk and Scotland, experiences that he used in his novel A Day in Summer.

In March 1945 he married Sally (Hilda Gladys Sexton), a Red Cross nurse, and after leaving the RAF in about January 1946 and taking three months' demobilisation leave, he returned to teaching in Birmingham. In 1951 he was appointed headmaster of Highfields Primary School in Kettering, Northamptonshire, a post he held from 1952 to 1967.

In 1967, having written two novels, he retired from teaching to devote himself to publishing and writing.]]

When Carr gave up teaching in 1967 his aim was to try to make his living by publishing small books and a series of maps of English counties to be read and discussed, rather than to provide navigational information. These he published himself under the imprint The Quince Tree Press. The original printing plates from several of his maps were mounted on sheets of plywood and used by Carr as stepping stones in his garden. The garden also contained statues he had carved himself, many of which had mirrors set into the stone at such angles that the sun shone through the windows on his birthday. (1989).

Carr wrote several non-fiction works and published them at his Quince Tree Press. They include a dictionary of cricketers, a dictionary of parsons, and dictionaries of English kings and queens. He also provided the text for several school textbooks published by Macmillan Publishers and Longman, and designed to develop children's English language skills.

Novels

  • A Day in Summer (1963). London: Barrie and Rockliff.
  • A Season in Sinji (1967). London: Alan Ross.
  • The Harpole Report (1972). London: Secker & Warburg.
  • How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the F.A. Cup (1975). London: London Magazine Editions.
  • A Month in the Country (1980). Brighton, Sussex: The Harvester Press.
  • The Battle of Pollocks Crossing (1985). London: Viking.
  • What Hetty Did (1988). Kettering: The Quince Tree Press.
  • Harpole & Foxberrow General Publishers (1992). Kettering: The Quince Tree Press.

Social history

  • The Old Timers: A Social History of the Homesteading Pioneers in the Prairie States During the First Few Years of Settlement, as Shown by a Typical Community, the "Old-Timers" of Beadle County in South Dakota (1957). Huron, South Dakota: privately printed.

Children's language books

  • (1970). The Red Windcheater, Nippers series. Illustrated by George Adamson. London: Macmillan.
  • (1972). The Garage Mechanic, What Do They Do? series. Illustrated by Chris Mayger. London: Macmillan.
  • (1972). The Dustman, What Do They Do? series. Illustrated by Michael Shoebridge. London: Macmillan.
  • (1974). The Old Farm Cart, Language in Action series, Level 3. Illustrated by Richard Butler. London: Macmillan.
  • (1974). Red Foal's Coat, Language in Action series, Level 2. Illustrated by Susan Richards. London: Macmillan.
  • (1976). An Ear-ring for Anna Beer, Language in Action series, Level 3. Illustrated by Trevor Ridley. London: Macmillan.
  • (1976). The Green Children of the Woods, Whizz Bang series. Illustrated by Bill Sanderson. London: Longman.
  • (1980). Gone with the Whirlwind, Language in Action series, Level 4. Illustrated by Ken Evans. London: Macmillan.

Dictionaries

  • (1977). Carr's Dictionary of Extra-ordinary English Cricketers. Kettering: The Quince Tree Press.
  • (1977). Carr's Dictionary of English Queens, Kings' Wives, Celebrated Paramours, Handfast Spouses and Royal Changelings. Kettering: The Quince Tree Press.
  • (1979?). Carr's Dictionary of English Kings, Consorts, Pretenders, Usurpers, Unnatural Claimants and Royal Athelings. Kettering: The Quince Tree Press.
  • (198?). Welbourn's Dictionary of Prelates, Parsons, Vergers, Wardens, Sidesmen and Preachers, Sunday-school teachers, Hermits, Ecclesiastical Flower-arrangers, Fifth Monarchy Men and False Prophets. Kettering: The Quince Tree Press.
  • (1983). Carr's Illustrated Dictionary of Extra-ordinary Cricketers. London: Quartet Books.
  • (1985?). A Dictionary of Extraordinary English Cricketers Volume Two. Kettering: The Quince Tree Press.
  • (1985). Gidner's Brief Lives of the Frontier. Kettering: The Quince Tree Press.

Other writings

  • (1981). The Poor Man's Guide to the Revolution of 1381. Kettering: The Quince Tree Press.
  • (1981?) Forefathers. Kettering: The Quince Tree Press.
  • (1982). "Justice Silence, now blind, wits wandering a little and very old, is visited by Sir John Falstaff's page, now a man, and asked for news of Francis Feeble, the woman's tailor, once unfairly conscripted for the army during rebellion." In Shakespeare Stories, ed. Giles Gordon. London: Hamish Hamilton, pages 82–90. .
  • (1987). An Inventory and History of The Quince Tree Press to Mark Its 21st Year and the Sale of Its 500,000th Small Book. August 1987. Kettering: The Quince Tree Press.
  • (1990). "The First Saturday in May". In Fine Glances. A Connoisseur's Cricket Anthology, eds Tom Graveney, Mike Seabrook. London: Simon and Schuster, pages 21–25.
  • (1990). "Looking for Lord". In My Lord's. A Celebration of the World's Greatest Cricket Ground, ed. Tim Heald. London: Willow Books, Harper Collins, pages 15–19. .
  • (1990). Redundant Churches Fund. Churches in Retirement. A Gazetteer. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, Foreword, pages ix–x.
  • (1993). "Cricket Books, 1992." In Wisden Cricketers' Almanack 1993, ed Matthew Engel. Guildford, Surrey: John Wisden, pages 1295 – 1306. .
  • (1994). Some Early Poems and Recent Drawings by J. L. Carr 1912–1994. Bury St Edmunds: The Quince Tree Press.

Biography

  • Byron Rogers (2003). The Last Englishman: A Biography of J. L. Carr. London: Aurum Press.
  • BBC (2025) Miles Jupp on JL Carr, author of A Month in the Country https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002hkqs (Accessed August 27th 2025)

References

  • Quince Tree Press
  • Bibliography of J.L. Carr
  • J. L. Carr Collection at the Visual Arts Data Service
  • Sound recording of part of a BBC Radio 4 programme Front Row in 2003 of a review of Byron Rogers's biography with parts of a 1988 interview with Carr
  • Portrait of J. L. Carr held at the National Portrait Gallery in London.