The Hills and the Vale

Posthumously published in 1909, this is a collection of essays by the English nature writer and novelist Richard Jefferies. We are republishing this work with a brand new introductory biography of the author with the aim of placing it in the context of his other writings. The following passage is an extract from the introduction: 'It was not for nothing that Jefferies, man and boy, had gone through the phases of sportsman, naturalist, and artist, and always worshipper, upon the hills, 'that he lived in a perpetual commerce with external Nature, and nourished himself upon the spirit of its forms.' Air and sun so cleaned and sweetened his work that in the end the cleanness and sweetness of Nature herself become inseparable from it in our minds.'