Landscape with Figures: An Anthology of Prose

'The wheat is beautiful, but human life is labour' Trekking across the English countryside, the nineteenth-century nature writer Richard Jefferies recorded his responses to everything from the texture of an owl's feather and 'noises in the air' to the grinding hardship of rural labour. This superb selection of his essays and articles shows a writer who is brimming with intense feeling, acutely aware of the land and those who work on it, and often ambivalent about the countryside. Who does it belong to? Is it a place, an experience, or a way of life? In these writings, almost all our current ideas and concerns about rural life can be found. Selected with an introduction by Richard Mabey