Richard Jefferies

The adventures of a boy growing up in the English countryside in the nineteenth century.

Amaryllis at the Fair is a work of fiction largely based on Richard Jefferies’ childhood in rural England. The author tenderly shows the difficulties and beauties of rural life in a family struggling to make ends meet. The narrative, such as there is one, focuses on young Amaryllis and her observations and interactions with her family and people from the surrounding towns. The novel is written in a style that does not place much emphasis on story, and instead goes into great detail on topics as varied as country life, strong ale, the construction of a good fence, the disappointments of age, the joys and troubles of family, and poverty. These topics are often commented on by the narrator, who acts as a stand-in for Jefferies. Amaryllis at the Fair was the last novel written by Richard Jefferies before his death. “The book is not a novel,” or some variation, was a common response from critics. It follows its own paths and often eschews traditional plot, instead providing a fluid and clear view of the life of the family at the heart of the book.

Relates the experiences and adventures with his animal friends of a small boy growing up in the English countryside.

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While browsing a Stonington, Maine, bookstore, Brooke Williams and Terry Tempest Williams discovered a rare copy of an exquisite autobiography by nineteenth-century British nature writer Richard Jefferies, who develops his understanding of a "soul-life" while wandering the wild countryside of Wiltshire, England. Brooke and Terry, like John Fowles, Henry Miller, and Rachel Carson before, were inspired by the prescient words of this visionary writer, who describes ineffable feelings of being at one with nature. In an introduction and essays set alongside Jefferies' writing, the Williams share their personal pilgrimage to Wiltshire to understand this man of "cosmic consciousness" and how their exploration of Jefferies deepened their own relationship while illuminating dilemmas of modernity, the intrinsic need for wildness, and what it means to be human in the twenty-first century.

This book is a reprint of the following stories printed in the following publications: Time, Longman's Magazine, The Graphic, The Standard, The Magazine of Art, The Gentleman's Magazine, The St. James's Gazette, The National Review, The Manchester Guardian, and The Pall Mall Gazette.

Felise is an independent young woman living on her uncle’s farm. She is in love with Martial, the proprietor of the neighboring farm. She tries to win him over, though he has been hurt from a previous relationship and resists her bold advances. Their courtship intertwines with the stories of the other folk working the nearby farms. Like much of the work of Richard Jefferies, The Dewy Morn is really not about the plot, and more about the feeling of the characters and the depictions of country life. This story has much in common with Jefferies’ later novel Amaryllis at the Fair, though The Dewy Morn has a slightly greater emphasis on plot, and has fewer digressions. While not one of his more well-known books, The Dewy Morn represents a further lean into the nature oriented style he would eventually come to be known for.

The story of Greene Ferne Farm centers around Margaret Estecourt and her two suitors: Geoffrey and Valentine. The trio, as well as their friends, travel the countryside, have adventures on the farm, and stir up rumors in the surrounding towns. In many ways the farm and its surroundings are characters in the story, and their history and social complications quickly absorb the main narrative in favor of painting a picture of the land, the customs, and the joys and sorrows of youth and farm life. Greene Ferne Farm was the first novel by Richard Jefferies to feature what was to become his trademark literary style: a fusion of his agricultural essays, for which he was well known at the time, and narrative based storytelling. He would go on to develop this style further in a number of other novels, but never so simply and directly as in Greene Ferne Farm.