What would happen, I wondered, if I simply missed out the fifty per cent
of the population whose voices have been credited with shaping this
particular 'cultural form'. If I coppiced the woodland, so to speak, and
allowed the light to shine down to the forest floor and illuminate
countless saplings now that a gap has opened in the canopy. . .
There has, in recent years, been an explosion of writing about place,
landscape and the natural world. But within this blossoming of interest,
women's voices have remained very much in the minority.
For
the very first time, this landmark anthology collects together the work
of women, over the centuries and up to the present day, who have written
about the natural world in Britain, Ireland and the outlying islands of
our archipelago. Alongside the traditional forms of the travelogue, the
walking guide, books on birds, plants and wildlife, Women on Nature
embraces alternative modes of seeing and recording that turn the genre
on its head. Katharine Norbury has sifted through the pages of women's
fiction, poetry, household planners, gardening diaries and recipe books
to show the multitude of ways in which they have observed the natural
world about them, from the fourteenth-century writing of the anchorite
Julian of Norwich to the seventeenth-century travel journal of Celia
Fiennes; from the keen observations of Emily Bronte to a host of
brilliant contemporary voices.
Women on Nature presents a
groundbreaking vision of the natural world which, in addition to being a
rich and scintillating anthology that shines a light on many unjustly
overlooked writers, is of unique importance in terms of women's history
and the history of writing about nature.
Hardback
Women on Nature - Katharine Norbury
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£17.99