DOWNLAND by Anna Dillon and Jonathan Davidson

The Scarlet Shawl published 150 years ago

150th Wedding Anniversary

Richard Jefferies and Jessie Baden were married at the parish church of the Holy Cross, Chiseldon on Wednesday 8^th July 1874. Richard’s brother and sister, Henry James and Sarah, were the witnesses, but it is not known if Jefferies’ parents were present, nor who else was at the ceremony.

 

Chiseldon Church, Wiltshire c1910. Kate Allen Tryon (1865–1952)

The Meaning of Butterflies: science, aesthetics, spirituality, poetics, relationship with place

 Matthew Oates will be talking about ‘The Meaning of Butterflies: science, aesthetics, spirituality, poetics, relationship with place.’

RICHARD JEFFERIES SOCIETY SPRING LECTURE

Saturday 27 April 2024, 2pm

Richard Jefferies Museum, Marlborough Road, Coate, Swindon SN3 6AA

Official recognition of the ‘Richard Jefferies Russet’ at Coate

Richard Jefferies -- his life and work in Cirencester

RICHARD JEFFERIES: A MISCELLANY

Jefferies-Williams Meeting 6 April 2019

Talk, walk and tree-planting in Surbiton

Excavating the future

Samuel Looker and Richard Jefferies

Celebrating Richard Jefferies early years at Coate

6 November 2017 marks almost 170 years since the day that Richard Jefferies was born on the family farm at Coate (now part of Swindon). The Richard Jefferies Society is celebrating the occasion with a public meeting to be held at Liddington Village Hall on Saturday 4 November starting at 2.30pm and the publication of the first volume of a new biography of Richard Jefferies that covers his early years living in the Coate area – a time that inspired his writing and which provided his first job as a reporter on the local paper. 

Tour of Broadwater Cemetery - August 2017

RICHARD FORTEY WINS 2016 LITERARY PRIZE

From the left: Angus Maclennan, John Price and Richard Fortey

The Richard Jefferies Society and The White Horse Bookshop Writer's Prize has been awarded to British palaeontologist, natural historian, writer and broadcaster Richard Fortey for The Wood for the Trees (William Collins). From a short list of five, the panel judged that the book best met the criterion of reflecting themes or topics broadly consistent with Jefferies’ writing.

Connections and Inspirations: the Influence of Richard Jefferies on Writers and Poets

RICHARD JEFFERIES SOCIETY 

STUDY DAY

SATURDAY 24 June 2017

Connections and Inspirations: the Influence of Richard Jefferies on Writers and Poets

Readings from Richard Jefferies and Alfred Williams

Birthday Lecture 5 Nov 2016

Event: Tewkesbury and John Moore

Ben Tubbs Adventures published for the first time

Ben Tubbs Adventures is Richard Jefferies’ earliest extant work of any length, probably written in his late teens.  It is a quest novel of voyage and adventure, and his first essay in a genre to which he was naturally drawn. It was probably influenced by the greatest quest story of them all, Homer’s Odyssey, one of Jefferies’ favourite books as a boy.

It is likely that Jefferies wrote it for his personal amusement and the entertainment of family and friends. For students of Jefferies, the novel is of interest.

The humour and Ben’s pranks in the early chapters of the book are juvenile and immature but fitting for a boy’s story. The descriptions of the slaves on the slave-ships are racist in the extreme and painful to read. However the later chapters, that treat Ben’s adventures in America, show some sparks of Jefferies’ real writing talent. He describes the prairies with great sensitivity.

The book is published for the first time (April 2016), in paperback (200pp)and is available through the Richard Jefferies Society at a cost of £8 plus postage (rrp £12). Go to:

http://richardjefferiessociety.org.  There is an excellent introduction by Andrew Rossabi and this is worth reading in its own right.

Ben Tubbs Adventures (Petton Books: Norfolk, 2016). ISBN: 9780956375179.

NEW PUBLICATION - AVAILABLE NOW

The Farmer’s World (Petton Books, Feb. 2016) is now available. The book comprises all the articles (nearly 90) by Jefferies published in The Live Stock Journal and Fancier's Gazette in the late 1870s, along with a masterly introduction by Professor Eric Jones.

The articles are forthright, almost campaigning, often urging readers to reconsider their conservative ways, to be innovative, to seek commercial opportunities and to tackle waste. ‘Middlemen’ were regularly disparaged, traditional methods of distribution questioned and imaginative schemes suggested to bring producer and consumer closer together. Jefferies also displayed a surprising ability in figures and a good grasp of mechanical engineering, explaining with clarity the workings of newly invented farming machinery. The essays collected here demonstrate Jefferies’ expertise in trade-paper journalism and contrast sharply with his later, lyrical work. He was a modernist of his time, and declares: ‘agriculture has become far too wide for the brain of any one man’.

The soft-back book can be purchased from the Richard Jefferies Society for £10 plus postage.