Time walking through the countryside around Coate and along the wide chalkĮxpanses of the Marlborough Downs. When they found themselves without sufficient money to pay for food.Ī self-absorbed and independent youth, Jefferies spent much of his To board a ship for the United States but this plan also came to nothing On their return to England they attempted In thisĮscapade he was accompanied by a cousin, but the journey was abandoned soonĪfter they reached France. With the intention of traversing Europe as far as Moscow. A combination of an unsettled home life and anĮarly romantic desire for adventure led him at the age of sixteen to leave home Remarks made in some of Jefferies’ childhood letters to hisĪunt also strongly suggest an absence of mutual affection and understandingīetween mother and son. In the country and the portrait of her as Mrs Iden - usually regarded as anĪccurate one - in his last novel, Amaryllis at the Fair, is anything butįlattering. Richard’s mother, who had been brought up in London, never settled into a life There were also, it seems, other tensions in the family. Of Jefferies' childhood were spent in a household increasingly threatened by Nature but was unsuccessful as a farmer, with the result that the later years His father was a thoughtful man with a passionate love of The outskirts of Swindon - where his family farmed a smallholding of aboutįorty acres. He was born at Coate in the north Wiltshire countryside - now on Something that became almost an obsession for him in his last years. In my view his greatest achievement lies in his expression,Īesthetically and spiritually, of the human encounter with the natural world – Williamson and John Fowles are among those who have acknowledged their debt to Number of more prominent writers and W.H. Jefferies, however, has been an inspiration to a

Intermittent spells of popularity, but today he is unknown to the greater part To some people he is more familiar as the author of theĬhildren’s classic Bevis or the strange futuristicįantasy After London , while he also has some reputation as a However, a closerĮxamination of his career reveals a many-sided author who was something of anĮnigma. Life and agriculture in late Victorian England. (John) Richard Jefferies (6 November 1848 - 14 August 1887) isīest known for his prolific and sensitive writing on natural history, rural

After london by richard jefferies