Jefferies, Richard — The Life of the Fields

Chatto & Windus London viii, 262; 32 [publisher's adverts], . . HB. 8vo, orig. cloth, bevelled boards, spine and edges of boards faded, some marking to boards. Endpapers and page edges browned. Vg.. Special edition with hand-made-paper. 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 is the first collection of Jefferies' miscellaneous writings from a number of periodical sources; it consists of 23 essays, including 'The Pageant of Summer', 'Nature near Brighton', January in the Sussex Woods', 'Village Miners', 'The Hovering of the Kestrel', 'Nature and the Gamekeeper', 'Sunlight in a London Square', 'Meadow Thoughts'. 'The Pageant of Summer' is considered to be one of Jefferies' finest nature essays. Miller & Matthews B20.6..