Wild Life in a Southern County

Bradford-on-Avon: Moonraker Press, 1978. 384, b/w frontis, text + full-page wood-engravings. . HB. Vg in d/w (price-clipped). Charmingly illustrated with scenes of the English countryside.. With an important introduction by the biographer of Hardy, Desmond Hawkins. Charmingly illustrated with scenes of the English countryside with wood engravings by C. F. Tunnicliffe. Comprises of a number of articles first published in the <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i> between May and December 1878. Richard Jefferies (1848-1887), English journalist, prose-poet of nature, novelist of the rural landscape, is one of the major figures in the long tradition of British rural writers: 'No one English writer before had had such a wide knowledge of labourers, farmers, gamekeepers, poachers, of the fields, and woods, and waters, and the sky above them, by day and night … When he wrote these books […] he had no rival, nor have they since been equalled in purity, abundance, and rusticity.' (Thomas, E. (1909), Richard Jefferies: his life and work, p. 320).This book has been described as an encyclopaedia of ‘country sights and country matters.’ For the modern reader provides an invaluable record of a certain time and place in the English country life. Miller & Matthews B9.28; B. Morris, <i>Richard Jefferies and the Ecological Vision</i> (2006), p 136-7. [9780239001801]