Modern British Nature Writing, 1789–2020
Land Lines

This first full-length study of modern British nature writing is timely and invaluable for literary scholarship in the environmental crisis.

Will Abberley (Author), Christina Alt (Author), David Higgins (Author), Graham Huggan (Author), Pippa Marland (Author)

9781107191327, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 March 2022

300 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.1 cm, 0.54 kg

Why do we speak so much of nature today when there is so little of it left? Prompted by this question, this study offers the first full-length exploration of modern British nature writing, from the late eighteenth century to the present. Focusing on non-fictional prose writing, the book supplies new readings of classic texts by Romantic, Victorian and Contemporary authors, situating these within the context of an enduringly popular genre. Nature writing is still widely considered fundamentally celebratory or escapist, yet it is also very much in tune with the conflicts of a natural world under threat. The book's five authors connect these conflicts to the triple historical crisis of the environment; of representation; and of modern dissociated sensibility. This book offers an informed critical approach to modern British nature writing for specialist readers, as well as a valuable guide for general readers concerned by an increasingly diminished natural world.

Introduction
1. Chapter One
2. Chapter Two
3. Chapter Three
4. Chapter Four
Afterword: Shades of White.

Subject Areas: Conservation of the environment [RNK], The environment [RN], Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD], Literature: history & criticism [DS], Literature & literary studies [D]