Nature Tales for Winter Nights

by Campbell, Nancy

• ISBN13: 9781783967421
• ISBN10: 1783967420
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2024-10-15
• Publisher: Elliott & Thompson

Summary

A treasure trove of nature tales from storytellers across the globe, bringing a little magic and wonder to every winter night.

As the evenings draw in – a time of reckoning, rest and restoration – immerse yourself in this new seasonal anthology. Nature Tales for Winter Nights puts winter – rural, wild and urban – under the microscope and reveals its wonder.

From the late days of autumn, through deepest cold, and towards the bright hope of spring, here is a collection of familiar names and dazzling new discoveries.

Join the naturalist Linnæus travelling on horseback in Lapland, witness frost fairs on the Thames and witch-hazel harvesting in Connecticut, experience Alpine adventure, polar bird myths and courtship in the snow in classical Japan and ancient Rome. Observations from Beth Chatto’s garden and Tove Jansson’s childhood join company with artists’ private letters, lines from Anne Frank’s diary and fireside stories told by indigenous voices.

A hibernation companion, this book will transport you across time and country this winter.

Author Biography

Nancy Campbell received the Royal Geographical Society Ness Award in 2020 for a decade-long creative response to the polar environment, which began during a winter as Artist in Residence at the most northern museum in the world on Upernavik in Greenland. Her books include Fifty Words for Snow, a Waterstones Book of the Month, The Library of Ice: Readings in a Cold Climate, and the poetry collection Disko Bay. She was appointed Canal Laureate in 2018, writing poems for installation across the UK waterways from London Docklands to the River Severn.

Table of Contents

Contents Introduction by Nancy Campbell · xi the wind · 1 Anne Frank snow mountains everywhere · 3 Sei Shonagon cold burns and breaks · 13 Olaus Magnus a holly among hollies · 15 Daisy Hildyard a shadow · 17 Charlotte Bronte a winter day on the sea-beach · 21 Walt Whitman grace · 23 Joy Harjo a certain blueness about the lips · 25 Virginia Woolf the iceberg · 33 Tove Jansson to be done in the parterre, and flower-garden · 37 John Evelyn notes on a landscape · 41 Theophilus Kwek the raven and the goose · 43 when the ravens could speak · 43 the raven who wanted a wife · 44 Inuit folktales departure of HMS Beagle · 47 Charles Darwin relic of an expedition · 49 Salomon Andree the rainy season · 51 Daniel Defoe foraging · 55 Joseph Roth berries · 57 Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov a harsh winter · 61 Mathilte Sorensen a time to harvest · 63 Damian Le Bas the golden bough · 69 James Frazer yuletide · 73 Marchelle Farrell latin lockdown · 75 Longus a small bouquet · 79 Beth Chatto davos in winter · 81 Robert Louis Stevenson sea storm · 85 Jorsias Ammonsen the witch-hazel gatherer · 89 Edwin Way Teale a letter from the Netherlands · 95 Vincent van Gogh the message · 97 Nancy Campbell if winter comes can spring be far behind? · 99 Alvin Aubert into Spain and back again · 101 Dorothy Pilley books and other rations · 111 Matthew Henson a mountain ramble · 115 Dorothy Wordsworth the light · 117 The Quran a murmuration · 119 Tim Dee on nests · 127 Susan Fenimore Cooper encounter on the road of Hercules: Alpes Maritimes · 129 Charlotte Du Cann shelter in a snow-drift · 135 Ernest Thompson Seton sheep in winter · 139 John Clare the frozen river · 141 Henry David Thoreau a meteorological journal · 143 John Rae no ordinary snow-storm · 147 Henry David Thoreau from hedge to hedge · 149 Charles Darwin on snow-water · 153 Carl Linnaus a comfortable shelter · 157 William Scoresby, Junior a riddle · 161 The Exeter Book the wild wood · 163 Kenneth Grahame a meteor shower · 167 Elizabeth-Jane Burnett Beygja – bend. Djú pt – deeply. Halda – hold. · 169 Sarah Thomas Author biographies · 173 Bibliography · 189 Endnotes · 195 Permissions · 197 Acknowledgements · 201