Book description
At the end of the 18th-century Britain fell in love with nature.
Thomas Bewick's History of British Birds marked the moment, the first
'field-guide' for ordinary people, illustrated by woodcuts of
astonishing accuracy and beauty. But it was far more than that, for in
the vivid vignettes scattered through the book Bewick drew the
vanishing way of life of the country people of the North East. In this
superbly illustrated biography, Jenny Uglow tells a story of violent
change, radical politics, lost ways of life and the beauty of the wild
- a journey to the beginning of our lasting obsession with the natural world.
Jenny Uglow grew up in Cumbria, and now works in publishing. Her
books include prize-winning biographies of Elizabeth Gaskell and
William Hogarth. The Lunar Men, published in 2002, was described in
the Observer as 'a spectacular, epic book ... Never has the eighteenth
century come so much to life,' while her most recent book, A Little
History of British Gardening, was called 'a delight from beginning to
end' in the Observer. She lives in Canterbury.
