The Feast of July

A fine novel which Bates published in the early 1950s, The Feast of July is set in the 1880s in the fictional world of Evensford and its surrounding area (familiar to all Bates followers). Bella Ford, aged 19 and a girl of generous and determined character, having been seduced by an older and married man, Arch Wilson, goes in search of him and eventually finds him with tragic circumstances. In the meantime she is befriended and given a home by a family of shoemakers, the Wainwrights, who help her restore her faith in living. Through them, and especially the three Wainwright sons, she rediscovers beauty, fulfillment, love and great happiness...until a crisis of extreme tragedy puts her to the highest test. One critic wrote: “The story is reminiscent of Thomas Hardy…the naive girl made pregnant by the slick villain, the rural setting and seasonal rhythms, the inevitable violence, the flight with the lover and his eventual capture--all are variations on Tess of the d'Urbervilles."

The title, The Feast of July, derives from the July 'Sunday of Fifty Feasts', celebrated all over the Midlands. These feasts were once religious in character, but they became annual pleasure fairs, and up to the end of the 19th century they were robust and very colourful.