Women on Nature

'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...'

This anthology collects together and illuminates the writing of women, over the centuries and up to the present day, who have written about and are writing now about the natural world in Britain, Ireland and the outlying islands of our archipelago.

There has, in recent years, been an explosion of interest in writing about place, landscape, and the natural world. This renewed fascination with the genre of nature writing coincides with a critical moment in our planet's history with the acknowledgement of the extent to which human activity has influenced climate and the environment. Exciting new voices have emerged in response to the challenges this represents. But despite the blossoming interest, women's voices have remained very much in the minority.

Alongside the traditional forms of the travelogue, the walking guide, books about the observing and naming of birds, plants and wildlife, Women on Nature will investigate and embrace other ways of seeing and recording. Katharine Norbury has sifted though 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 and recorded 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 Bronte of Haworth Moor in Yorkshire, to the brilliant new voices writing today, including Helen Macdonald, Melissa Harrison, Amy Liptrot and many more.

Women on Nature is a rich and beautiful anthology, which will be a landmark publication of unique importance in terms of education, women's history, and the history of writing about nature.