The Eulogy of Richard Jefferies

I think that I have never read, in all the sad chronicles of hapless authors, anything more pitiful than the history of the last years of this life so short, yet so rich in its...

It was then, very slowly, and after many hesitations, false starts, deviations, and mistakes, that Jefferies at last discovered himself and his real powers. He had written, for...

"Go," said the Voice which dismisses the soul on its way to inhabit an earthly frame. "Go; thy lot shall be to speak of trees, from the cedar even unto the hyssop that springeth...

He wrote a paper for _Fraser's Magazine_ (December, 1873) on the "Future of Farming," which attracted a considerable amount of attention. The _Spectator_ had an article upon it....

In the history of literature one happens, from time to time, upon a book which has been written because the author had no choice but to write it. He was compelled by hidden forc...

Never, certainly, did any man have a better chance of success in literature than Jefferies about the year 1876. He had made himself, to begin with, an authority on the most inte...

The principal sources of information concerning the period of early manhood are the letters--a large number of these are happily preserved--which he wrote to his aunt, Mrs. Harr...

There is a very delightful old story which used to be given to children, though I have not seen it for a long time in the hands of any children. It was called "The Story without...

Mr. Charles Longman, who for the last eight years of Jefferies' life was one of his most constant friends, has lent me a packet of letters written to him by Jefferies between th...

There lies before me a roll containing certain newspaper extracts pasted on paper and sewed together. They are cuttings from the _North Wilts Herald_, and contain a romance, ent...

At the age of sixteen, Richard Jefferies had an adventure--almost the only adventure of his quiet life. It was an adventure which could only happen to a youth of strong imaginat...

With the year 1871 the early struggles of the young writer came to an end. He had now secured his position, such as it was, on the local press. As there are no further suggestio...