Book description
The letters of the eminent naturalist Gilbert White are full of
precise, unaffected and delightful observations of the wildlife of his
beloved village of Selborne, describing the habits, colours and songs
of birds from lapwings to barn-owls, wrens to house-martins. Here too
are exquisite writings on trees, fossils, bats and rainfall, filled
with intellectual curiosity and joy in the natural world.
Generations of inhabitants have helped shape the English
countryside - but it has profoundly shaped us too. It has provoked a
huge variety of responses from artists, writers, musicians and
people who live and work on the land - as well as those who are
travelling through it.English Journeys celebrates this long
tradition with a series of twenty books on all aspects of the
countryside, from stargazey pie and country churches, to man's
relationship with nature and songs celebrating the patterns of the
countryside (as well as ghosts and love-struck soldiers).
Gilbert White
(1720-93) was born in his grandfather's vicarage at Selborne,
Hampshire. After studying at Oriel College, Oxford, White spent much of
the next fifteen years travelling around England but always returned
home.
Birds of Selborne
is taken from his famous work
The Natural History of Selborne
, a compilation of his correspondences with Thomas Pennant and Daines
Barrington, and reputedly the fourth most published book in the English
language.
