The old house at Coate;: And other hitherto unpublished essays,

Harvard Univ. Press, 1948-01-01. Hardcover. Very Good/Good. Harvard Univ. Press, 1948. Hard cover, 215 pp. First Edition. Very good in good+ dust jacket. Brown cloth covered boards with gold lettering on spine. Light bumping and scuffing to edges of covers. Binding tight. Pages lightly aged but otherwise clean and unmarked with occasional light spotting. Dust jacket has a few small nicks and tears and light creasing along edges. Light overall scuffing, aging and soiling to jacket as well. NOT price clipped. Now in an archival-quality (removable) Brodart Cover. NOT Ex-library. NO remainder marks. Lovely wood engravings by Agnes Miller Parker. [From jacket flaps] The Publication of this new book by Richard Jefferies marks the centenary of his birth - at Coate Farmhouse, near Swindon - in 1848. He was one of England's great writers on country matters, and every lover of the English scene or of English prose will be easily captured by his spell. The essays here included are Nature essays, written in a personal, warm, clear style that is Jefferies at his very best. None of them has ever appeared before in any form. They have been collected over forty years by Mr. Samuel J. Looker, the editor of this volume, who provides an appendix of biographical notes on Jefferies. The book is beautifully illustrated with 24 wood engravings by Agnes Miller Parker. The Old House at Coate, from which this volume takes its name, is an autobiographical essay of intense feeling and spiritual quality, written in the mood of the mellow and striking memories of Jefferies' beloved Wiltshire. In Trees in and around London, one of the smaller essays, Jeffries returns to a favorite theme: the ugliness s and unsuitability of plane trees, and his dislike of laurels and what he calls other exotic shrubs in suburban gardens and elsewhere. This diatribe provides and opportunity for the praise of the dearly loved hawthorn tree. Tree and Bird Life in the Copse describes the one spot, near at hand, where Jeffries could watch the bird life he loved, and described the trees, season by season, in days when his health prevented the long country rambles in which he had formerly delighted. The Life of the Soul, the concluding essay, is impassioned prose-poetry and was written only a short time before the author ceased to write. Jeffries writes of the beauty of each season; he describes the bird in the wood or hedge, the wild flowers of the field or wayside, the wild thyme of the Downs, the clematis in the lane. His book leads the reader into a fresh and creative world of thought and feeling.