(First published in 1883, Nature Near London presents an...)
First published in 1883, Nature Near London presents an authentic illustration of the idyllic countryside to be found near London, England. This volume constitutes a must-read for all lovers of nature writing, and it would make for a worthy addition to collections of vintage literature. John Richard Jefferies (1848 1887) was an English nature writer. He is famous for his exceptional depictions of English country life in his natural history books, essays, and novels. Most of his major works were inspired by his early life spent on a small farm in Wiltshire, England. Other notable works by this author include: Bevis (1882), a classic children's novel, and After London (1885), an fantastic example of classic science fiction. Contents include: Woodlands, Footpaths, Flocks Of Birds, Nightingale Road, A Brook, A London Trout, A Barn, Wheatfields, The Crows, Heathlands, The River, Nutty Autumn, Round A London Copse, Magpie Fields, Herbs, Trees About Town, To Brighton, etc. Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.
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(The Toilers of the Field is presented here in a high qual...)
The Toilers of the Field is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by Richard Jefferies is in the English language, and may not include graphics or images from the original edition. If you enjoy the works of Richard Jefferies then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection.
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( Richard Jefferies was the most imaginative and least co...)
Richard Jefferies was the most imaginative and least conventional of nineteenth-century observers of the natural world. Trekking across the English countryside, he recorded his responses to everything from the texture of an owl's feather and 'noises in the air' to the grinding hardship of rural labour. This superb selection of his essays and articles shows a writer who is brimming with intense feeling, acutely aware of the land and those who work on it, and often ambivalent about the countryside. Who does it belong to? Is it a place, an experience or a way of life? In these passionate and idiosyncratic writings, almost all our current ideas and concerns about rural life can be found. Richard Jefferies (1848-1887) was the son of a Wiltshire farmer. He never worked the land but made his living from writing, trekking across the countryside with his notebook. He spent much of his life struggling against poverty and tuberculosis, which would eventually kill him at the age of thirty-nine. As well as being in many ways the father of English nature writing, Jefferies also wrote the classic children's book Bevis and the apocalyptic science-fiction novel After London. Richard Mabey's introduction to his selection of Jefferies' work discusses the author's life, his views on the paradoxes of rural life and his place in the tradition of nature writers.
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(The Story of My Heart is an autobiography, first publishe...)
The Story of My Heart is an autobiography, first published in 1883, by English nature writer, essayist and journalist Richard Jefferies. It is no true autobiography, but the story of a soul's awakening. Richard Jefferies describes how, leaving aside all the preconceptions of past and future, he placed himself in the eternal Now, and allowed the Now to become his soul's only guide and source of nourishment. Thus freed from the usual blocks to awareness, Jefferies' senses became windows for his soul, through which the natural world could be seen in its true, dazzling brilliance. Jefferies describes how this vision reflected back into his consciousness an awareness of his soul's eternity, and its immense, unquenchable longing and love for what he called 'soul-life'.
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(18 Complete Works of Richard Jefferies After London Amar...)
18 Complete Works of Richard Jefferies After London Amaryllis at the Fair Bevis Field and Hedgerow Greene Ferne Farm Hodge and His Masters Nature Near London Round About a Great Estate The Amateur Poacher The Gamekeeper At Home The Hills and the Vale The Life of the Fields The Open Air The Pageant of Summer The Story of My Heart The Toilers of the Field Wild Life in a Southern County World's End
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(Excerpt from The Open Air St. Guido ran out at the garde...)
Excerpt from The Open Air St. Guido ran out at the garden gate into a sandy lane, and down the lane till he came to a grassy bank. He caught hold of the bunches of grass and so pulled himself up. There was a footpath on the top which went straight in between fir-trees, and as he ran along they stood on each side Of him like green walls. They were very near together, and even at the top the space between them was so narrow that the sky seemed to come down, and the clouds to be sailing but just over them, as if they would catch and tear in the fir-trees. The path was so little used that it had grown green, and as he ran he knocked dead branches out Of his way. Just as he was getting tired of running be reached the end of the path, and came out into a. Wheat-field. The wheat did not grow very closely, and the spaces were filled with azure corn-?owers. St. Guido thought he was safe away now, so he stopped to look. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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He was born near Swindon, Wiltshire, United Kingdom, on November 6, 1848, the son of a small farmer. Richard's mother, Elizabeth Gyde (1817–1895), always called Betsy, was the daughter of John Jefferies's binder and manager. His childhood on a small Wiltshire farm had a great influence on him and provides the background to all his major works of fiction. James and Elizabeth's first child, Ellen, had died young; but Richard had two younger brothers and a younger sister.
Jefferies spent several of his earlier years, between the ages of four and nine, with his aunt and uncle, the Harrilds, in Sydenham, where he attended a private school, returning to Coate in the holidays. He was sent to school, first at Sydenham and then at Swindon, till the age of fifteen or so, but his actual education was at the hands of his father, who gave him his love for Nature and taught him how to observe. Jefferies, as a boy, was more than an observer of the fields; he was bookish, and read all the books that he could borrow or buy.
Early in 1866, he started work as a newspaper reporter for the North Wiltshire Herald. For several years he worked as a reporter, contributing not only to the North Wiltshire Herald, but also to the Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard and to the Swindon Advertiser. He published articles on local history in the North Wiltshire Herald and was the first to notice a stone circle near Coate Farm. In September 1867 and July 1868 he was very ill. In retrospect the illnesses were clearly the first symptoms of the tuberculosis that would kill him. In 1872, however, he published a remarkable letter in The Times, on " The Wiltshire Labourer, " full of original ideas and of facts new to most readers.
In 1873, after more false starts, Jefferies returned to his true field of work, the life of the country, and began to write for Fraser's Magazine on " Farming and Farmers. "
The rest of his history is that of continual advance, from close observation becoming daily more and more close, to that intimate communion with Nature with which his later pages are filled.
The developments of the later period are throughout touched with the melancholy that belongs to ill-health.
He was pursuing a career as a writer, writing a history of the Goddards, a local family, and Reporting, Editing, and Authorship: Practical Hints for Beginners in Literature (1873), in which he shared the fruits of his brief experience as a local reporter. While in Swindon, Jefferies had found it difficult to seek publication or employment with London publishers; and early in 1877, with Jessie and their baby son Harold, he moved to a house at what is now 296 Ewell Road, Tolworth, near Surbiton. His new surroundings defined him, both to himself and others, as a country writer. Articles drawing on Jefferies's Wiltshire experiences found a ready market in The Pall Mall Gazette. First came a series of essays based on his friendship with the keeper of the Burderop estate, near Coate, The Gamekeeper at Home, collected as a book in 1878. The book was well received and Jefferies was compared with the great English nature writer, Gilbert White. Three more collections followed the same pattern of publication in The Pall Mall Gazette and then in book form: Wild Life in a Southern County and The Amateur Poacher (both 1879), and Round About a Great Estate (1880). Another collection, Hodge and his Masters (1880), brought together articles first published in the Standard. In the few years that Jefferies took to write these essays, his literary skill developed rapidly: The Amateur Poacher in particular is regarded as a major advance on the earlier works. A minor novel, Greene Ferne Farm (1880), was the first to gain recognition, both from contemporaries and in later scholarship. In December 1881, Jefferies began to suffer from his until then undiagnosed tuberculosis, with an anal fistula. After a series of painful operations, he moved to West Brighton to convalesce. About this time he wrote his extraordinary autobiography, The Story of My Heart (1883). Articles about the Surbiton area were reprinted in the popular Nature Near London (1883), although the last chapters of the book refer to Beachy Head, Ditchling Beacon and other Sussex landmarks. Jefferies's next novel, After London (1885), can be seen as an early example of "post-apocalyptic fiction". After Eltham, Jefferies lived briefly in various parts of Sussex, first at Rotherfield, then in a house on Crowborough Hill. In Crowborough Jefferies completed his most ambitious and most unusual novel, Amaryllis at the Fair (1887). Another fund arranged by Longman enabled Jefferies to move nearer to the sea, to the Worthing suburb of Goring.
(18 Complete Works of Richard Jefferies After London Amar...)
(First published in 1883, Nature Near London presents an...)
(The Story of My Heart is an autobiography, first publishe...)
( Richard Jefferies was the most imaginative and least co...)
(The Toilers of the Field is presented here in a high qual...)
(Excerpt from The Open Air St. Guido ran out at the garde...)
Quotations: In a letter of 1885, he writes of his reaction to After London: "absurd hopes curled around my heart as I read it. "
For much of his adult life, he suffered from tuberculosis, and his struggles with the illness and with poverty also play a role in his writing. Jefferies valued and cultivated an intensity of feeling in his experience of the world around him.
In 1874, the year of his first published novel, The Scarlet Shawl, he married Jessie Baden, the daughter of a nearby farmer. After living for a few months at Coate Farm, the couple moved to a house in Swindon in 1875 (its current address is 93 Victoria Road); and their first child, Richard Harold Jefferies, was born there on 3 May. The couple's next child, a daughter called Jessie after her mother (but known by her second name, Phyllis), was born (on 6 December 1880). In Brighton, his third child, Richard Oliver Launcelot Jefferies, was born on 18 July 1883. But his life was to be a short one. Jefferies moved to Eltham, then in Kent, now a part of Greenwich, in June 1884, and here, early in 1885, the child died suddenly of meningitis. Jefferies was so affected that he could not attend the funeral.
