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From a Country Hilltop: Henry Williamson Collections, #9
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Henry Williamson (1895-1977), nature writer and novelist, remains best known for his nature stories set in North Devon, and particularly the much-loved classics Tarka the Otter and Salar the Salmon. Between 1951 and 1969 he published his great work, the fifteen-volume novel sequence A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight, the story of Phillip Maddison. While he was writing these he was also continuing to write short pieces for newspapers and magazines. From a Country Hilltop is a collection of 58 such essays written between 1958 and 1964, which were published in the Co-operative Society's Home Magazine and, in its Out of Doors series, the Sunday Times. The 'country hilltop' was his haven, the field at Ox's Cross in North Devon that he had bought after the success of Tarka the Otter, and where he had built his writing hut. These short essays – personal musings on life, his children, North Devon (now known as 'Tarka Country') and other subjects – show HW's descriptive powers at their best. Nowhere is this shown better than in 'The Last Summer', a longer piece that is an evocative personal re-creation of the last golden summer of 1914 before the outbreak of the First World War and life changed forever; it was published in 1964 in the Sunday Times Magazine to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of the war.
Author
Henry Williamson
The writer Henry Williamson was born in London in 1895. Naturalist, soldier, journalist, farmer, motor enthusiast and author of over fifty books, his descriptions of nature and the First World War have been highly praised for their accuracy. He is best known as the author of Tarka the Otter, which won the Hawthornden Prize for Literature in 1928 and was filmed in 1977. By one of those extraordinary coincidences, Henry Williamson died while the crew were actually filming the death scene of Tarka. His writing falls into clear groups: 1) Nature writings, of which Tarka the Otter and Salar the Salmon are the most well known, but which also include, amongst many others, The Peregrine's Saga, The Old Stag and The Phasian Bird. 2) Henry Williamson served throughout the First World War.The Wet Flanders Plain, A Patriot's Progress, and no less than five books of the 15-volume Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight (How Dear is Life, A Fox Under My Cloak, The Golden Virgin, Love and the Loveless and A Test to Destruction) cover the reality of the years 1914–1918, both in England and on the Western Front. 3) A further grouping concerns the social history aspect of his work in the 'Village' books (The Village Book and The Labouring Life), the four-volume Flax of Dream and the volumes of the Chronicle. But all of these groups can be found in any of his books. Some readers are only interested in a particular aspect of his writing, but to truly understand Henry Williamson's achievement it is necessary to take account of all of his books, for their extent reflects his complex character. The whole of life, the human, animal and plant worlds, can be found within his writings. He was a man of difficult temperament but he had a depth of talent that he used to the full. The Henry Williamson Society was founded in 1980, and has published a number of collections of Williamson's journalism, which are now being published as e-books.
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Titles in the series (20)
Chronicles of a Norfolk Farmer: Contributions to the Daily Express, 1937-1939: Henry Williamson Collections, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHeart of England: Contributions to the Evening Standard, 1939-1941: Henry Williamson Collections, #4 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOn the Road: Contributions to the Weekly Dispatch, 1920-1921: Henry Williamson Collections, #6 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Breath of Country Air: Henry Williamson Collections, #5 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDays of Wonder: Contributions to the Daily Express, 1966-1971: Henry Williamson Collections, #3 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWords on the West Wind: Selected Essays from The Adelphi, 1924-1950: Henry Williamson Collections, #8 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAtlantic Tales: Contributions to The Atlantic Monthly, 1927-1947: Henry Williamson Collections, #7 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFrom a Country Hilltop: Henry Williamson Collections, #9 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Clear Water Stream: Henry Williamson Collections, #11 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Indian Summer Notebook: A Writer's Miscellany: Henry Williamson Collections, #10 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGenius of Friendship: T. E. Lawrence Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Notebook of a Nature-lover: Henry Williamson Collections, #12 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGreen Fields and Pavements: A Norfolk Farmer in Wartime: Henry Williamson Collections, #13 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSpring Days in Devon, and other Broadcasts: Henry Williamson Collections, #14 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPen and Plough: Further Broadcasts: Henry Williamson Collections, #16 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRecreating a Lost World: Henry Williamson and Folkestone 1919-20: fact into fiction: Henry Williamson Collections, #18 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Novels of Henry Williamson: Henry Williamson Collections, #17 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
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From a Country Hilltop - Henry Williamson
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