Richard Jefferies

Richard Jefferies (1848-1887), English author noted for his nature stories and articles. Born the son of a farmer near Swindon, Wiltshire, Jefferies was an unhappy child who found solace in wandering about the countryside. His best-known book, Bevis: The Story of a Boy (1882), has been described as the story of the boy Jefferies wished he had been; however, Wood Magic (1881), a novel featuring a child who talks with birds and animals, more truly reflects Jefferies’ own boyhood preoccupations. He also drew upon his own youth in writing Amaryllis at the Fair (1887), generally considered his best novel next to Bevis.

At age 17 Jefferies left farm life to begin reporting for a Swindon newspaper. His first book, Reporting, Editing, and Authorship (1873), was a manual on journalism. In 1874 he published his first novel, The Scarlet Shawl, and the following year he went to London to begin working as a free-lance journalist. The nature articles he wrote were collected in The Gamekeeper at Home (1878); The Amateur Poacher and Wild Life in a Southern County (1879); Round About a Great Estate (1880); The Life of the Fields (1884); and The Open Air (1885). His studies of agriculture were collected in Hodge and His Masters (1880, revised as A Classic of English Farming, 1946). In 1883 Jefferies published The Story of My Heart, a spiritual autobiography that still appeals strongly to urban readers with its sentimental treatment of rural life.