PLEASURES OF NATURE: A Literary Anthology      

A British Library publication which is beautifully decorated with antiquarian botanical woodcuts and close up details of natural history drawings and paintings and book illustrations by Walter Crane and Gustave Doré, John James Audubon?s The Birds of America, or an engraving entitled 'Summer' by P. W. Tomkins, a Golden Eagle by Archibald Thorburn from British Birds, or a view of Krakatoa during the earliest stage of the eruption from a photograph taken on the 27th May 1883. From Leonardo da Vinci on the shifting colours of the sky, to Charlotte Brontë on the wild moors of Yorkshire, this eclectic illustrated anthology of nature writing showcases many voices - lyrical, awestruck, celebratory and often deeply reflective. Writers are as varied as Wordsworth, Milton, Virgil, Emerson, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, Jane Loudon (1807-1858) on belling the rat, Aldous Huxley on Jonah and the Apes to Kenneth Stevens (born 1968) who concentrates on the magic of otters into eight lines of a poem. An infinitely varied and very beautiful collection, 224pp in sturdy softback.