Book description
Charles Waterton was the first conservationist who fought to protect
wild nature against the destruction and pollution of Victorian
industrialisation. During his lifetime he was famous for his
eccentricities, but also for his achievements and his opinions. A
Yorkshire landowner, he turned his park into a sanctuary for animals and
birds. As an explorer he learned to survive in the tropical rain forests
of South America without a gun or the society of other white men. He was
an authority on the poisons used by South American Indians and a
taxidermist of note. The huge public that read his books included
Dickens, Darwin and Roosevelt. Since his death the memory of Waterton's
personal eccenticities has flourished, while the originality of his
ideas and work has often suffered. Using his surviving papers, Julia
Blackburn has redressed the balance in a biogr aphy that restores
Waterton to his place as the first conservationist of the modern age.
Julia Blackburn is the author of
Charles Waterton, The Emperor's Last Island, Daisy Bates in the Desert
, which was shortlisted for the Waterstones/Esquire
Non-Fiction Award., The Book of Colour,
which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and, most recently, The
Leper's Companions,
also shortlisted for the Orange Prize. She lives in Suffolk
