When my father died in 1971, I read The Story of My Heart for solace; I found it abundantly in its pages: ‘It is useless to fill the heart with bubbles. A loved one gone is gone…’ And I have continued to think of him since then at least once a day, using his spirit […]
On 6th February 1989 I did a little chinwag in Swindon about the only four Jefferies novels I had access to then. I’ve just re-read what I said about The Dewy Morn and it still seems to make reasonable sense! There are little tweaks I’d make now. Here’s the original chinwag with a few 2022 […]
Pre-amble I’ve not long finished reading Restless Human Hearts for the first time. Having only recently re-joined the Richard Jefferies Society after many years of wandering around in other things (I remember Cyril Wright very well…) it was exciting to find that the books which had only been names to me for sixty years had […]
In The Pageant of Summer (the first essay in The Life of the Fields (1884)) Jefferies wrote:- My heart is fixed firm and stable in the belief that ultimately the sunshine and the summer, the flowers and the azure sky, shall become, as it were, interwoven into man’s existence. He shall take from all their […]
Having recently determined to read & re-read Jefferies’ work from beginning to end in order of writing, I’ve become conscious of the way he seems to thrive on contrast & juxtaposition, both small chunk and large chunk. It seems to me that his cognitive processes frequently go like this to good effect. As an example […]
In Restless Human Hearts (1875), after their trial marriage and disappointing continental trip, Neville and Georgiana are reflecting separately on the concern they feel about their future: Georgie wants the ‘transports of love’ she and Neville had at the beginning of their relationship, while Neville requires something else. “I think,” said Neville, speaking in a […]
Reading a few books for the first time, but mostly re-reading with new eyes what’s been on my shelves for many years, I’ve been struck by the drift of Jefferies’ way of putting things together, his cast of mind, notably his way of making contrasts between this & that: in essays, reportage and novels (where […]
Without realising it, I think that I joined what Kurt Schwitters called The International Brotherhood of Object Builders in 1966. Having escaped really dire Wage Slavery (oh, blessed release!), I was then in the middle of being ‘trained’ as a teacher, concentrating on English Literature but contributing keenly to artistic ventures. In no way did […]
Advocating the complete abandonment of nouns like ‘peak’ & ‘experience’ and looking very carefully at how we use other nouns of all kinds… I qualified as a Master Practitioner of NLP way back in 1993 (Yippee!). Anybody reading this essay may well ask – so what? Little ’twill matter to anybody but me really but […]
There are moments in our lives that stand out clear and shining against the sun of the soul, and in those moments the Being becomes suffused by a radiant light. This light blots out for a time the dark texture of the years through which we have passed. The soul becomes charged with new life […]
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