Wild Life in a Southern Country

Richard Jefferies

Jun 2015 · Read Books Ltd

About this ebook

This volume contains Richard Jefferies 1879 wildlife book, "Wild Life in a Southern County". A comprehensive examination of the birds and animals where he lived, these fascinating essays display Jefferies' deep admiration and understanding of the countryside. This volume is highly recommended for lovers of nature writing, and constitutes a must-read for fans of Jefferies beautiful work. The essays of this collection include: "The Downs", "The Entrenchment", "Ways of Larks", "Hares", "A Combat", "Happiness of Animals", "Ants", "A Long Journey", "A Drought", "Ancient Garrison of the Entrenchment", "Traditions of Forest", "Curious Ponds", "A Mirage", etcetera. John Richard Jefferies (1848 - 1887) was an English writer famous for depicting English rural life in essays, books and novels. Many vintage texts such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive, and it is with this in mind that we are republishing this book now, in an affordable, high-quality, modern edition. It comes complete with a specially commissioned biography of the author.

About the author

John Richard Jefferies (6 November 1848 - 14 August 1887) was an English nature writer, noted for his depiction of English rural life in essays, books of natural history, and novels. His childhood on a small Wiltshire farm had a great influence on him and provides the background to all his major works of fiction. For all that, these show a remarkable diversity, including Bevis (1882), a classic children's book, and After London (1885), an early work of science fiction. 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, a cultivation that he describes in detail in The Story of My Heart (1883). This work, an introspective depiction of his thoughts and feelings on the world, gained him the reputation of a nature mystic at the time. But it is his success in conveying his awareness of nature and people within it, both in his fiction and in essay collections such as The Amateur Poacher (1879) and Round About a Great Estate (1880), that has drawn most admirers. Walter Besant wrote of his reaction on first reading Jefferies: "Why, we must have been blind all our lives; here were the most wonderful things possible going on under our very noses, but we saw them not."