The Natural History of Selborne

by Gilbert White, Richard Mabey (Editor)

Overview

More than any other writer Gilbert White (1720-93) has shaped the relationship between man and nature. A hundred years before Darwin, White realised the crucial role of worms in the formation of soil and understood the significance of territory and song in birds. His precise, scrupulously honest and unaffectedly witty observations led him to interpret animals' behaviour in a unique manner. This collection of his letters to the explorer and naturalist Daines Barrington and the eminent zoologist Thomas Pennant - White's intellectual lifelines from his country-village home - are a beautifully written, detailed evocation of the lives of the flora and fauna of eighteenth-century England.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780141905198
Publisher:	Penguin UK
Publication date:	05/26/1977
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	3 MB
Age Range:	3 Months

About the Author

Edited with an introduction by Richard Mabey

Table of Contents

Letters to Thomas Pennant, Esq
Letters to the Honourable Daines Barrington

Editorial Reviews

"I can wholeheartedly recommend this edition ... Beautifully produced ... Secord's introduction - surely one of the chief reasons to purchase this new edition of a book never out of print - provides a nuanced and stimulating account of the origins, character, and legacies of Selborne." — Diarmid A. Finnegan, Journal of Historical Geography

"This Oxford edition offers new insights into a work that has been hugely popular." — Land and Business

"This book set the standard for much of the nature writing that has followed in its wake. White is a great example of an amateur naturalist - the grandfather of citizen science and public data capture. The work is a powerful reminder of the richness of the natural world in White's time and a marker of how much we've lost since then." - Arts & Humanities Research Council

From the Publisher

Peter Wickham slips easily into the voice of the eighteenth-century English parson and naturalist Gilbert White as he delivers White's pioneering study of the seasonal patterns of plants and animals. Vigorous and precise, Wickham's performance captures not only the antique grace of White's prose, but also his understanding of the importance of the details he was recording. Written in the form of letters to other naturalists, these brief chapters evoke a time when nature shaped the cycles of everyday life. They are ideal companions for gardening and chores, and, equally, for times of unease and stress. Written at the same time as the American Constitution, they are as remote from politics, strife, and pollution as this century is from that untroubled country garden in England. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine

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