The Open Air

The Open Air

by Richard Jefferies
The Open Air

The Open Air

by Richard Jefferies

Paperback

$6.99 
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Overview

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.

Jefferies's corpus of writings covers a range of genres and topics, including Bevis (1882), a classic children's book, and After London (1885), a 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 about 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." (wikipedia.org)


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781500464660
Publisher: CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date: 07/09/2014
Pages: 90
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.19(d)

About the Author

English nature writer Richard Jefferies, who lived from 6 November 1848 to 14 August 1887, is renowned for his portrayals of English country life in his essays, natural history works, and fiction. The setting for all of his major fictional works is drawn from his upbringing on a modest farm in Wiltshire. The writings of Jefferies span a variety of genres and subjects, including science fiction novel After London (1885) and the beloved children's book Bevis (1882). He battled tuberculosis for a significant portion of his adult life, and his troubles with both the disease and with poverty are reflected in his writing. In The Story of My Heart, Jefferies goes into detail on how he cherished and practiced cultivating an intensity of feeling in his perception of the world (1883). The Amateur Poacher (1879) and Round About a Great Estate (1880), two essay collections in which he successfully conveyed his awareness of nature and the people who inhabit it, acquired him at the time the reputation of a natural mystic. 
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