A Year with Gilbert White: The First Great Nature Writer
Sep 2025 · Faber & Faber
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416
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About this ebook
'Uglow makes us feel the life beyond the facts.' GUARDIAN
'Few can match Uglow's skill at conjuring up a scene, or illuminating a character.' SUNDAY TIMES
'Charming . . . Like Radio 4's shipping forecast for naturalists.' Andrea Wulf, FINANCIAL TIMES
'A glorious celebration of curiosity and nature.' OBSERVER
In 1781, Gilbert White was a country curate, living in the Hampshire village he had known all his life. Fascinated by the fauna, flora and people around him, he kept journals for many years, and, at that time, was halfway to completing his path-breaking The Natural History of Selborne. No one had written like this before, with such close observation, humour, and sympathy: his spellbinding book has remained in print ever since, treasured by generations of readers.
Jenny Uglow illuminates this quirky, warm-hearted man, 'the father of ecology', by following a single year in his Naturalist's Journal. As his diary jumps from topic to topic, she accompanies Gilbert from frost to summer drought, from the migration of birds to the sex lives of snails and the coming of harvest.
Fresh, alive and original - and packed with rich colour illustrations - A Year with Gilbert White invites us to see the natural world anew, with astonishment and wonder.
'A feast of a book, it is beautifully illustrated and compulsively readable.' LITERARY REVIEW
'The author brings her subject endearingly alive . . . [an] enriching book.' NATURE
'Few can match Uglow's skill at conjuring up a scene, or illuminating a character.' SUNDAY TIMES
'Charming . . . Like Radio 4's shipping forecast for naturalists.' Andrea Wulf, FINANCIAL TIMES
'A glorious celebration of curiosity and nature.' OBSERVER
In 1781, Gilbert White was a country curate, living in the Hampshire village he had known all his life. Fascinated by the fauna, flora and people around him, he kept journals for many years, and, at that time, was halfway to completing his path-breaking The Natural History of Selborne. No one had written like this before, with such close observation, humour, and sympathy: his spellbinding book has remained in print ever since, treasured by generations of readers.
Jenny Uglow illuminates this quirky, warm-hearted man, 'the father of ecology', by following a single year in his Naturalist's Journal. As his diary jumps from topic to topic, she accompanies Gilbert from frost to summer drought, from the migration of birds to the sex lives of snails and the coming of harvest.
Fresh, alive and original - and packed with rich colour illustrations - A Year with Gilbert White invites us to see the natural world anew, with astonishment and wonder.
'A feast of a book, it is beautifully illustrated and compulsively readable.' LITERARY REVIEW
'The author brings her subject endearingly alive . . . [an] enriching book.' NATURE
About the author
Jenny Uglow writes on literature, art, and social history. Her books include award-winning biographies on Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot, William Hogarth, Thomas Bewick and Edward Lear, as well as group studies including The Lunar Men and the panoramic In These Times: Living in Britain through Napoleon's Wars, 1793-1815. A retired editorial director of Chatto & Windus, and former Chair of the Council of the Royal Society of Literature, she grew up in Cumbria, and she and her husband Steve now live in Borrowdale.
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