Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field

Last updated
Meadowland
Author John Lewis-Stempel
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
SubjectNature, English countryside
Publisher Penguin Random House
Publication date
2014
Media typePrint

Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field is a non-fiction book by British author John Lewis-Stempel, focusing on the natural history of an English field throughout a year. The book provides a detailed account of the flora and fauna of the English countryside and is notable for its deep observation and reflection on nature.

Contents

Background

John Lewis-Stempel, an experienced farmer and historian, writes from personal experience and deep connection with the English countryside. Meadowland offers insight into the seasonal changes and wildlife of a meadow, reflecting the author's intimate knowledge and relationship with the land. [1]

Summary

In Meadowland, Lewis-Stempel chronicles a year in the life of a field on his farm in Herefordshire, detailing the interaction of plants, animals, and the changing seasons. The narrative combines personal diary entries with natural history, providing a comprehensive view of rural life and nature.

Reception

Meadowland received positive reviews for its detailed observation and lyrical prose. The Guardian described it as a "fascinating field study" and praised its detailed account of rural wildlife. [2] Caught by the River highlighted the book's intimate detail and engaging narrative. [3] The book is also featured in the London Review Bookshop's list of notable works by the author. [4]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing</span> American journalism award

The Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing is one of the fourteen American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Journalism. It has been awarded since 1979 for a distinguished example of feature writing giving prime consideration to high literary quality and originality.

Richard Thomas Mabey is a writer and broadcaster, chiefly on the relations between nature and culture.

<i>The Blue Lagoon</i> (novel) 1908 coming-of-age novel by Henry De Vere Stacpoole

The Blue Lagoon is a coming-of-age romance novel written by Henry De Vere Stacpoole, first published by T. Fisher Unwin in 1908. The Blue Lagoon explores themes of love, childhood innocence, and the conflict between civilisation and the natural world. The book immerses the reader in a captivating and haunting setting through Stacpoole's vivid depictions of the island and its untamed splendour.

<i>The Final Days</i>

The Final Days is a 1976 non-fiction book written by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein about the Watergate scandal. A follow-up to their 1974 book All the President's Men, The Final Days concerns itself with the final months of the Presidency of Richard Nixon including battles over the Nixon White House tapes and the impeachment process against Richard Nixon.

Richard Sidney Richmond Fitter was a British naturalist and author. He was an expert on wildflowers and authored several guides for amateur naturalists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Cocker</span> British author and naturalist (born 1959)

Mark Cocker is a British author and naturalist. He lives with his wife, Mary Muir, and two daughters in Claxton, Norfolk. The countryside around Claxton is a theme for two of his twelve books.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nature writing</span> Nonfiction or fiction prose or poetry about the natural environment, literary genre

Nature writing is nonfiction or fiction prose or poetry about the natural environment. Nature writing encompasses a wide variety of works, ranging from those that place primary emphasis on natural history facts to those in which philosophical interpretation predominate. It includes natural history essays, poetry, essays of solitude or escape, as well as travel and adventure writing.

<i>Great Cities of the Ancient World</i>

Great Cities of the Ancient World is history book by American writer and essayist L. Sprague de Camp, published by Doubleday in 1972. It was reissued by Dorset Press in 1990. It has also been translated into German.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Lewis-Stempel</span>

John Lewis-Stempel is an English farmer, writer, and Sunday Times Top 5 best selling author.

Derek Robertson RSW SSA SAA is a Scottish artist. One of the signature members of the Society of Animal Artists, he is known for his paintings of wildlife and landscapes, and for his poetic narrative work consisting of paintings, constructions and installations. He has been elected several times on the Council of the RSW and has written and presented 5 television programs about his work and the wildlife he portrays and has written 5 books about his art: The Mugdrum, Highland Sketchbook, A Studio Under The Sky, Otters, An Artist's Sketchbook, "Living Landscapes" and Puffins: An Artist's Sketchbook. His work has also illustrated many other publications.

<i>Elizabeth Barrett Browning: A Biography</i> 1988 book by Margaret Forster

Elizabeth Barrett Browning: A Biography by Margaret Forster, first published in 1988, is a biography of the English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, which won the Heinemann Award in 1989. Forster draws on newly discovered letters and papers that shed light on the poet's life before she met and eloped with Robert Browning, and rewrites the myth of the invalid poet guarded by an ogre-like father, to give a more-nuanced picture of an active, difficult woman who was complicit in her own virtual imprisonment. It remained the most-detailed published biography of the poet in 2003, and was one of the best known of Forster's biographies in 2016.

Jean Lucey Pratt was an English writer and bookseller. She published little during her lifetime and is best known as a diarist. Her anonymous Mass-Observation diaries written in the 1940s were featured in three popular books edited by Simon Garfield. A Notable Woman: The Romantic Journals of Jean Lucey Pratt, published in 2015, is derived from private diaries she kept between 1925 and 1986.

Harold Henry Abbott was an English schoolmaster, for the last fifteen years of his career headmaster of grammar schools, who published poetry as H. H. Abbott.

<i>David Bangs</i> British writer and conservationist

David Bangs is a field naturalist, social historian, public artist, author and conservationist. He has written extensively on the countryside management, both historically and present day in the English county of Sussex.

Theodora Stanwell-Fletcher was an American naturalist and writer. She is best known for her book Driftwood Valley (1946) which won the John Burroughs Medal for distinguished writing in natural history in 1948. She was recognized as a Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania and elected to the Society of Woman Geographers.

Jim Crumley is a Scottish journalist, a former newspaper editor and regular columnist for the Dundee Courier and The Scots Magazine. He is also the author of more than 40 books, mostly on the wildlife and wild landscapes of Scotland, many of them making the case for species reintroductions, or ‘rewilding’. His Seasons series, a quartet of books exploring the wildlife and landscapes and how climate change is affecting our environment across the four seasons, is highly acclaimed. The Nature of Autumn was longlisted for the Wainwright Golden Beer Book Prize 2017 and shortlisted for the Richard Jefferies Society and White Horse Bookshop Literary Prize 2017. The Nature of Spring was BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week. The Nature of Summer, published in 2020, was shortlisted for the 2021 Highland Book Prize. His most recent book, Lakeland Wild, is his first to focus entirely on an English landscape.

Peter Marren is a British writer, journalist, and naturalist. He has written over 20 books about British nature, including Chasing the Ghost: My Search for all the Wild Flowers of Britain (2018), an account of a year-long quest to see every wild flower in the UK; Rainbow Dust: Three Centuries of Butterfly Delight (2016); Bugs Britannica (2010); and After They're Gone: Extinctions Past, Present and Future (2022). Marren has also written a number of books about military history and battlefields and, as a journalist, many national newspaper articles.

Where Poppies Blow: The British Soldier, Nature, The Great War is a non-fiction book by British author John Lewis-Stempel, focusing on the relationship between British soldiers and nature during World War I. The book explores how nature provided solace, distraction, and a sense of normalcy amidst the horrors of war.

The Wood: The Life and Times of Cockshutt Wood is a non-fiction book by British author John Lewis-Stempel. Written in a diary format, it chronicles Lewis-Stempel's experiences managing Cockshutt Wood, a mixed woodland in Herefordshire. The book, which covers the final year of his stewardship, reflects on the importance of such woodlands in the British countryside and their rich biodiversity.

The Wild Life: A Year of Living on Wild Food is a non-fiction book by British author John Lewis-Stempel. It documents his experiment of spending a full year eating only food that he could hunt, gather, or forage from his forty-acre farm.

References

  1. "My Countryside interview: John Lewis-Stempel". Countryfile.
  2. "Meadowland review – John Lewis-Stempel's fascinating field study". The Guardian. June 8, 2014.
  3. Cowen, Rob (April 2015). "Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field by John Lewis-Stempel". Caught by the River.
  4. "Author of the Month: John Lewis-Stempel". London Review Bookshop.