Synopsis "Women on Nature (in English)"
What would happen, I wondered, if I simply missed out the fifty per cent of the population whose voices have been credited with shaping this particular ‘cultural norm’. If I coppiced the woodland, so to speak, and allowed the light to shine down to the forest floor and illuminate countless saplings now that a gap has opened in the canopy. . . There has, in recent years, been an explosion of writing about place, landscape and the natural world. But within this blossoming of interest, women’s voices have remained very much in the minority. For the very first time, this landmark anthology collects together the work of women, over the centuries and up to the present day, who have written about the natural world in Britain, Ireland and the outlying islands of our archipelago. Alongside the traditional forms of the travelogue, the walking guide, books on birds, plants and wildlife, Women on Nature embraces alternative modes of seeing and recording that turn the genre on its head. Katharine Norbury has sifted through the pages of women’s fiction, poetry, household planners, gardening diaries and recipe books to show the multitude of ways in which they have observed the natural world about them, from the fourteenth-century writing of the anchorite nun Julian of Norwich to the seventeenth-century travel journal of Celia Fiennes; from the keen observations of Emily Brontë to a host of brilliant contemporary voices. Women on Nature presents a groundbreaking vision of the natural world which, in addition to being a rich and scintillating anthology that shines a light on many unjustly overlooked writers, is of unique importance in terms of women’s history and the history of writing about nature. Contributors include: Aalto, Kathryn Abe, Naoke Aldridge, Kitty Ali, Monica von Arnim, Elizabeth Atkin, Polly Austen, Jane Barbauld, Anna Laetitia Barker, Cicely M. Barratt Browning, Elizabeth Beer, Amy-Jane Beeton, Isabella Bell, Gertrude Bellarby, Frances Bennett, Claire-Louise Blackie, Sharon Blyton, Enid Boase, Tessa Brackenbury, Alison Bradbury, Kate Bronte, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Campbell, Nancy Carew, Keggie Carhew, Natasha Cavendish, Margaret Chester, Nicola Cornford, Frances Cracknell, Linda Dacre, Ann Darlington, Miriam ní Dochartaigh, Kerri Evans, Christine Evans, Margiad Evans, Sara Fiennes, Celia Fleming, Anna George, Josie Gittens, Chrissie Gleeson, Sinéad Goldsmith, Sally Gramich, Eluned Griffiths, Jay Harrison, Melissa Hauxwell, Hannah Hawkes, Jacquetta Holden, Edith Holten, Katie Jacoby, Olga Jamie, Kathleen Jedamus, Julith Julian of Norwich Kay, Jackie Kempe, Margery Kenward, Louise Lear, Linda Lee, Jessica J. Lichtenstein, Rachel Lingard, Ann Liptrot, Amy Lloyd, Karen Lovell, Jane Macdonald, Helen Maitland, Sara Malyon, Mary Marland, Pippa McAnulty, Bláthnaid Mckenzie, Zakiya McNeil, Jean Mew, Charlotte Meynell, Alice Mitchell, Emma Morris, Jan Mort, Helen Murray, Elizabeth Rose Norgate, Stephanie O’Garra Worsley, Annie Okojie, Irenosen Orr, Deborah Oswald, Alice Padel, Ruth Pendarves, Thomasina Philips, Katherine Plath, Sylvia Pilley, Dorothy Porteous, Katrina Reddy, Jini Rooney, Rachel Roper, Lynne Rossetti, Christina Sackville West, Vita Samson, Polly Sethi, Anita Shepherd, Hilary Shepherd, Nan Sidney, Mary Sieff, Daniela Smith, Ali Smith, Charlotte Smith, Stevie Sprackland, Jean Sweeting, Jo Talbot, Aletheia Thomas, Sarah Tucker, Trileigh Underhill, Evelyn Wellesley, Dorothy Whitney, Isabella Wilson, Nic Woolf, Virginia Wordsworth, Dorothy
