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Summer is a season of richness: gold against blue; sun dazzle on water; sweet fragrance, and the sound of insects, filling the air. We feel the sand between our toes, or the grass beneath our feet. In these long, warm days, languid and sensual, we reconnect with the natural world, revelling in light and scent and colour once more.; Capturing the high point of the year's progress, Summer presents prose and poetry spanning eight hundred years. Featuring new contributions by Simon Barnes, Michael McCarthy and Esther Woolfson, classic extracts from the work of Charles Dickens, Mary Webb and Philip Larkin, and diverse new nature writing from across the UK, this vibrant and evocative collection will inspire you to go out and enjoy the pleasures of summer.
- Introduction by Melissa Harrison vii
- Edward Thomas 1
- Anon. 5
- Annie Worsley 7
- Thomas Furly Forster 11
- Caroline Greville 12
- Reverend Gilbert White 15
- Thomas Hardy 18
- Jennifer Garrett 22
- Wilhelm Nero Pilate Barbellion 25
- Alexi Francis 26
- Sir Edward Grey 29
- John Tyler 33
- Richard Jefferies 37
- Thomas Furly Forster 41
- Alexandra Pearce 43
- Julia Wallis 46
- Nicholas Breton 49
- Vivienne Hambly 50
- George Eliot 53
- Thomas Furly Forster 55
- Matt Adam Williams 56
- Simon Barnes 59
- Edward Thomas 63
- Olivia Laing 65
- Jo Cartmell 68
- Laurie Lee 71
- Janet Willoner 78
- Thomas Hardy 81
- Jacqueline Bain 83
- W. H. Hudson 86
- Emma Oldham 91
- Reverend Gilbert White 93
- Nick Acheson 95
- Alice Oswald 97
- Kate Blincoe 99
- Kenneth Allsop 101
- Michael McCarthy 103
- Thomas Furly Forster 107
- Charles Dickens 108
- Jan Freedman 114
- James Common 118
- Clare Leighton 120
- Georgia Locock 124
- Mark Cocker 127
- Benjamin Zephaniah 129
- Zach Haynes 131
- Thomas Furly Forster 134
- Dawn Bradley 136
- Philip Larkin 139
- Miles King 141
- Paul Evans 144
- John Green 149
- William Morris 152
- Lucy McRobert 153
- Esther Woolfson 156
- Reverend Gilbert White 161
- Samantha Fernley 163
- Thomas Furly Forster 166
- Alan Wright 167
- Edward Step 169
- Katy Bell 172
- Mary Webb 176
- Julian Beach 179
- Nicola Chester 181
- Ebenezer Jones 185
- Richard Adams 186
- Megan Shersby 188
- Thomas Furly Forster 191
- Norman MacCaig 192
- Ronald Blythe 193
- Alison Brackenbury 195
- R. F. Langley 196
- Rhiannon Bull 199
- Thomas Furly Forster 201
- Leigh Hunt 202
- Author Biographies 205
Melissa Harrison won the John Muir Trust's 'Wild Writing' Award in 2010 and was a Writer in Residence at Gladstone's Library in 2014. She delivered one of the inaugural Coleridge Lectures as part of Bristol's Festival of Ideas, spoke about landscape and Englishness at The Southbank's Changing Britain festival, and has appeared on Radio 4's Open Book and The Arts Show on Radio 2. She writes for the Nature Notes column in The Times and blogs about nature at Tales of the City. Her first novel, Clay, was published by Bloomsbury in January 2013, followed by At Hawthorn Time in April 2015. She studied English Literature at Oxford.
