The Story of My Heart, 1883

CHAPTER I: THE STORY OF MY HEART [published Oct. 1883] commences seventeen years ago. In the glow of youth there were times every now and then when I felt the necessity of a strong inspiration of soul thought. My heart was dusty, parched for want of the rain of deep feeling; my mind arid and dry, for there is a dust which settles on the heart as well as that which falls on a ledge. ... When this began to form I felt eager to escape from it, to throw off the heavy clothing, to drink deeply once more at the fresh fountains of life. An inspiration―a long deep breath of the pure air of thought―could alone give health to the heart. There is a hill [Liddington] to which I used to resort at such periods. The labour of walking three miles to it, all the while gradually ascending, seemed to clear my blood of the heaviness accumulated at home. On a warm summer day the slow continued rise required continual effort, which carried away the sense of oppression.... I began to breathe a new air and to have a fresher aspiration. ... Moving up the sweet short turf, at every step my heart seemed to obtain a wider horizon of feeling; with every inhalation of rich pure air, a deeper desire. The very light of the sun was whiter and more brilliant here. By the time I had reached the summit I had entirely forgotten the petty circumstances and the annoyances of existence. I felt myself, myself.

28 April 2025

Nature's Ghosts by Sophie Yeo wins the Richard Jefferies Award for Nature Writing




Sophie Yeo will be talking about her award-winning book on Wednesday 3 November 2025 at 7.30pm. The Zoom meeting is open to all. To register and to be sent the Zoom link email the Richard Jefferies Society. 

On 28 April 2025 Sophie Yeo was announced as the winner of the Richard Jefferies Award for the best Nature Writing published in 2024 for her book Nature's Ghosts: The World We Lost and How to Get it Back published by HarperNorth. 

The judging panel praised the book, Sophie’s first, for its appealing, thoughtful and impressively researched approach to the subject of environmental change and conservation. Yeo invites fresh consideration of the long history of change, ‘peering into the annals of the earth’, to better understand how it has survived profound climate upheavals and the impact of human activity in the past, and to recognise the lessons these may have for modern conservation strategies. ‘I don’t believe that we can, or should, attempt to rewind the world to a specific point in time’, she writes. ‘But that does not mean that we should treat the past as irrelevant.’ While Yeo’s interest in ancient human societies and her sense of the wildness still present in the human psyche were subjects of significant interest to her Victorian predecessor, Richard Jefferies, her own animated eloquence and persuasive approach will encourage a wide readership to engage in a nuanced way with current debates about the politics of land ownership, managing change, rewilding, and a host of related and pressing issues. 

Sophie Yeo becomes the tenth winner of the Richard Jefferies Award which is jointly sponsored by the Richard Jefferies Society and The White Horse Bookshop in Marlborough, and is given for the most outstanding nature writing published in the past year. Nature’s Ghost was chosen from a strong shortlist of titles consisting of The Lost Paths (Michael Joseph) by Jack Cornish; Lost Wonders  (Picador) by Tom Lathan; and The Accidental Garden (Profile Books) by Richard Mabey.


Professor Barry Sloan, Chair of the panel of judges, said:

By looking at the long history of environmental change and the role of people within it, the ghosts of the past, Sophie Yeo explores its relevance to the challenges facing the natural world today, and she writes in an engaging and accessible way for the modern audience.


Sophie Yeo (pictured above) said:

I am honoured and overjoyed that Nature's Ghosts has received the Richard Jefferies Award. I wrote it in the firm belief that history has lessons for us all when it comes to modern-day nature conservation: both as a scientific blueprint for what might be achieved, and as a way of re-enchanting us with the wonders of the natural world. Historical observers of the landscape, like Jefferies, have provided us with one such window into a world that has been largely lost, but that we should – in part – aspire to revive.

Previous winners of the award of £1,000 are: Gods of the Morning by John Lister-Kaye (2015), The Wood for the Trees by Richard Fortey (2016), The Seabird’s Cry by Adam Nicolson (2017), Wilding by Isabella Tree (2018), Rebirding by Benedict Macdonald (2019), Orchard by Benedict Macdonald and Nicholas Gates (2020), On Gallows Down by Nicola Chester (2021), Wild Fell by Lee Schofield (2022) and Late Light by Michael Malay (2023).