The Nature Diaries and Note–Books of Richard Jeff cries

Abstract

JEFFERIES has been dead for half a century, while three of his posthumous works were published in 1889, 1892, and 1909. Mr. Looker's scrap–book (it is scarcely more than that) of Jefferies' jottings will, therefore, come as a surprise to most people who, since Jefferies died at the age of thirty–eight after publishing twenty books in his lifetime, must have believed that only private letters remained to be read. Mr. Looker's remains, except for the short essay, “A Tangle of Autumn”, are unhappily like the dead leaves brushed together by the gardener after the tree has shed them. They consist, apart from the essay, of a “Nature Diary” written between August and October, 1879, a notebook of stray gleanings between August, 1883, and July, 1884, and a couple of poems published in periodicals. The rest of the book is filled in by a longish introduction, a short bibliography, explanatory notes by the editor, and quotations from the published books where Jefferies had worked up an entry in the diary or notebook. It is not much of a harvest (the poems were certainly not worth reprinting), but the editor has at any rate performed a labour of love. The Nature Diaries and Note–Books of Richard Jeff cries With an Essay, “A Tangle of Autumn”, now printed for the first time. Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Samuel J. Looker. Pp. 82. (Billericay: The Grey WaUs Press, 1941.) 8s. 6d. net.