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"Birth of Erichthonius: Athena receives the baby Erichthonius from the hands of the earth mother Gaia, Attic red-figure stamnos, 470–460 BC, Staatliche Antikensammlungen (Inv. 2413) In Greek mythology, King Erichthonius (; Ancient Greek: Ἐριχθόνιος) was a legendary early ruler of ancient Athens. According to some myths, he was autochthonous (born of the soil, or Earth) and raised by the goddess Athena. Early Greek texts do not distinguish between him and Erechtheus,Homer, Iliad 2.546–551. his grandson, but by the fourth century BC, during Classical times, they are distinct figures. Etymology Erichthonius of uncertain etymology is possibly related to a pre-Greek form *Erektyeu-. The connection of Ἐριχθόνιος with ἐρέχθω, "shake" is a late folk- etymology; other folk-etymologies include ἔριον, erion, "wool" or eris, "strife"+ χθών chthôn or chthonos, "earth".Beekes, s.v. Ἐριχθόνιος, has suggested a Pre-Greek proto-form *Erektyeu-Graves, 25 "Athene's Nature and Deeds", p. 99. Mythology =Birth= Athena Scorning the Advances of Hephaestus, Paris Bordone, between c. 1555 and c. 1560 According to the Bibliotheca, Athena visited the smith-god Hephaestus to request some weapons, but Hephaestus was so overcome by desire that he tried to seduce her in his workshop. Determined to maintain her virginity, Athena fled, pursued by Hephaestus. He caught Athena and tried to rape her, but she fought him off. During the struggle, his semen fell on her thigh, and Athena, in disgust, wiped it away with a scrap of wool (ἔριον, erion) and flung it to the earth (χθών, chthôn). As she fled, Erichthonius was born from the semen that fell to the earth. Athena, wishing to raise the child in secret, placed him in a small box. And then made sure no one would ever find out by giving him away.Apollodorus, 3.14.6. Athena gave the box to the three daughters (Herse, Aglaurus and Pandrosus) of Cecrops, the king of Athens, and warned them never to look inside. Pandrosus obeyed, but Herse and Aglaurus were overcome with curiosity and opened the box, which contained the infant and future-king, Erichthonius ("troubles born from the earth," following another etymology). (Sources are unclear regarding how many sisters participated.) The sisters were terrified by what they saw in the box: either a snake coiled around an infant, or an infant that was half-human and half-serpent. They went insane and threw themselves off the Acropolis. Other accounts state that they were killed by the snake. An alternative version of the story is that Athena left the box with the daughters of Cecrops while she went to fetch a limestone mountain from the Pallene peninsula to use in the Acropolis. While she was away, Aglaurus and Herse opened the box. A crow saw them open the box, and flew away to tell Athena, who fell into a rage and dropped the mountain she was carrying (now Mt. Lykabettos). As in the first version, Herse and Aglaurus went insane and threw themselves to their deaths off a cliff. =Reign= When he grew up, Erichthonius drove out Amphictyon, who had usurped the throne from Cranaus twelve years earlier, and became king of Athens. He married Praxithea, a naiad, and had a son, Pandion I. During this time, Athena frequently protected him. He founded the Panathenaic Festival in the honor of Athena, and set up a wooden statue of her on the Acropolis. According to the Parian Chronicle, he taught his people to yoke horses and use them to pull chariots, to smelt silver, and to till the earth with a plough. It was said that Erichthonius was lame of his feet and that he consequently invented the quadriga, or four-horse chariot, to get around more easily. He is said to have competed often as a chariot driver in games. Zeus was said to have been so impressed with his skill that he raised him to the heavens to become the constellation of the Charioteer (Auriga) after his death. The snake is his symbol, and he is represented in the statue of Athena in the Parthenon as the snake hidden behind her shield. The most sacred building on the Acropolis of Athens, the Erechtheum, is dedicated to Erichthonius. Erichthonius was succeeded by his son Pandion I. Gallery File:Erichthonius Released from His Basket LACMA 65.37.98.jpgErichthonius Released from His Basket by Antonio Tempesta (1606) File:Jakob Jordaens 015.jpgDaughters of Kekrops Finding Erichthonios by Jacob Jordaens (1640) File:Jacob-jordaens-erichtonius.jpgLes Filles de Cécrops découvrant l'enfant Érichthonios by Jacob Jordaens (1617) File:Peter Paul Rubens - The Discovery of the Child Erichthonius - WGA20295.jpgThe Discovery of the Child Erichthonius by Peter Paul Rubens (circa 1615) File:Pierre, Jean-Baptiste Marie - Mercury, Herse and Aglauros - 1763.jpgMercury, Herse and Aglauros by Jean-Baptiste Marie Pierre (1763) File:Rubens, Peter Paul - Finding of Erichthonius - 1632-1633.jpgFinding of Erichthonius by Peter Paul Rubens (between 1632 and 1633) File:Willem van Herp Erichthonius.jpgThe finding of the infant Erichthonius by Cecrops's daughters by Willem van Herp (circa 1650)) Notes References * Apollodorus, Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. * Beekes, S. P., Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2 vols. Leiden: Brill, 2009. * Graves, Robert; The Greek Myths, Moyer Bell Ltd; Unabridged edition (December 1988), . * Homer, The Iliad with an English Translation by A.T. Murray, Ph.D. in two volumes. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. * Smith, William; Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London (1873). Erichthonius External links * Images of Erichthonius in the Warburg Institute Iconographic Database Category:Autochthons of classical mythology Category:Kings of Athens Category:Children of Gaia Category:Children of Hephaestus Category:Attic mythology "
"Ice fishing in the Finnish Miljoonapilkki fishing competition. Ice fishing is the practice of catching fish with lines and fish hooks or spears through an opening in the ice on a frozen body of water. Ice fishers may fish in the open or in heated enclosures, some with bunks and amenities. Shelters Ice fishing on the Ottawa river, near the capital of Canada Snail shelters for wakasagi ice fishing on the Lake Ōno, near Mount Akagi, Maebashi, Gunma Prefecture, Japan. Longer fishing expeditions can be mounted with simple structures. Larger, heated structures can make multiple day fishing trips possible. A structure with various local names, but often called an ice shanty, ice shack, fish house, shack, bobhouse, or ice hut, is sometimes used. These are dragged or towed onto the lake using a vehicle such as a snowmobile, ATV or truck. The two most commonly used types are portable and permanent. The portable houses are often made of a heavy material that is usually watertight. The two most common types of portable houses are those with a shelter that flips behind the user when not needed, or pop up shelters with a door as the only way out. The permanent shelters are made of wood or metal and usually have wheels for easy transport. They can be as basic as a bunk heater and holes or have satellite television, bathrooms, stoves, full-size beds and may appear to be more like a mobile home than a fishing house. In North America, ice fishing is often a social activity. Some resorts have fish houses that are rented out by the day; often, shuttle service by Snow Track or other vehicles modified to drive on ice is provided. In Finland, solitary and contemplative isolation is often the object of the pastime. In Finland, fish houses are a rare occurrence, but wearing a sealed and insulated dry suit designed with space-age fabric is not. In North America, portable houses appear to create a city at locations where fishing is best. Fishing equipment Hand ice auger Ice fishing gear is highly specialized. An ice saw, ice auger or chisel is used to cut a circular or rectangular hole in the ice. The size of the hole depends on the type of fish sought, generally suggested is 8 inches (20 cm). Power augers are sometimes used. If these tools are not available, an axe may be used to chop the hole. A skimmer, a large metal spoon with holes in it, is used to remove new ice as it forms and to clear slush left from making the hole. During colder periods most ice anglers choose to carry a heater of some type. The heater is not only for warmth but also for keeping an angler's fishing hole from freezing. When temperatures fall to -20 °F (-29 °C) or colder it becomes very hard to keep a fishing hole open. Three main types of fishing occur. The first is using a small, light fishing rod with small, brightly coloured lures or jigs with bait such as wax worms, fat heads or crappie or shiner minnows. The angler sits at the hole in the ice and lifts the pole every now and then, producing the jig effect. The second is using tip-ups, which are made of wood or plastic, and have a spool of line attached, with a thin piece of metal that goes from the spool to the flag. Black line is put on the spool and a swivel is placed at the end of the black line. Then a piece of fishing line with a hook is attached to the swivel. Worms, power bait, grub worms or small minnows are placed on the hook. The hook with bait is placed into the water under the ice. The depth that the bait is placed goes according to several theories. One theory is the bait is placed one meter under the ice. The second is that the bait is placed two to three metres under the ice. The third is that the bait is suspended one foot (30 cm) above the bottom of the lake. When the fish strikes the bait the flag is lifted which notifies the angler that she has a fish on the hook. The angler pulls the line in and the fish fights. The angler will allow the line to slip through her hands during the struggle. Finally, when the angler can get the fish's head into the hole in the ice, the fish is quickly lifted onto the ice. This allows for less-intensive fishing. The third method is spear fishing. A large hole is cut in the ice and fish decoys may be deployed. The angler sits in a dark ice shanty called a dark house. The angler then peers into the water while holding a large spear which has four or five points. A line can be attached to the points. The fisher waits for fish to appear, then plunges the spear into the water. This method is often used for lake sturgeon fishing. In the United States many states allow only rough fish to be taken while spear fishing. Becoming increasingly popular is the use of a flasher, similar to its summer cousin the fishfinder . This is a sonar system that provides depth information, as well as indicating the presence of fish or other objects. These flashers, unlike most typical fishfinders, display the movement of fish and other objects almost instantaneously. The bait being used can often be seen as a mark on the flasher, enabling the angler to position the bait right in front of the fish. Underwater cameras are also now available which allow the user to view the fish and observe their reaction to the lure presentation. Clubbing is an old method seldom used today, mainly used on burbot, the fisher walks on clear ice in shallow water and sees a large fish through the ice and with a large club which she or he slams into the ice, the shockwave hits the fish and it is temporary paralyzed, which gives the fisher time to cut a hole in the ice to collect the fish. Modern ice fishing Ice fishing methods have changed drastically over the past 20 years. The name of the game is mobility for today's modern ice anglers. The days of drilling hole, waiting and hoping that a fish will swim by, are starting to fade. With light gear, battery-operated sonar units, and fast and powered augers, an angler can conceivably drill and check hundreds of holes in a single day. When the fish stop biting where they are, anglers can move to the next hole, checking it with their sonar first to look for activity, and if there are no fish they will keep moving until fish are found. In addition, schools of fish tend to move around; so a hole may be productive for 10 minutes and then slow down to nothing for an hour before a school returns to that location. This "fish where the fish are" technique and ease of mobility increases the catch rate of any angler, because it minimizes the wait between bites, similar to "trolling" in the month of summer. Anglers can now use many available maps and surveys to help pinpoint lakes and areas within those lakes that make sense to try for specific fish, noting those locations in latitude and longitude coordinates. They are then able to use a handheld GPS receiver to aim them to those spots, usually with accuracy of less than 20 feet. Ice anglers then drill holes with whichever auger they have, checking the ice thickness for safety as they go. Using sonar, the angler can determine the depth of the water, bottom content, weed and structure cover, and even see if there are fish there. Also, by using sonar, they can place the bait according to where they think the fish are. If they are using "tip-ups" they can carpet the area at different depths and with different presentations (the number allowed being determined by local laws) and see what is the most productive. Modern ice anglers can also use modern reels mounted on shorter (18"-36"/45–90 cm long) fishing rods to actively fish by watching, by using their sonar, where their lure is relative to the fish, and jig accordingly to entice a bite. Ice fishing can be done at any time of day, and is typically most active around dusk and dawn. Different fish are active at different times of day, so anglers need to fish for them accordingly. There are fish houses large enough and comfortable enough to spend many days in a row out on the lake, fishing the entire time. One can even fish in one's sleep, by using audible alarms on one's lines to tell when a fish is biting. There are also many lightweight and highly mobile portable shelters that mount on plastic sleds and collapse for transportation. These can vary from small, one-person shelters (commonly called "Fish Traps") to large and complex shelters able to fit up to 20 people at once. Dangers thumb Many anglers will go out with 2.5 inches (6.4 cm) of good ice for walking, but the recommended is 4 inches (10 cm), 5–6 inches (13–15 cm) for sleds (snow machines, snowmobiles), 7–12 (18–30 cm) for light cars, and 14–16 inches (36–41 cm) for full-sized trucks. Thinner ice in areas with swift surface currents are a significant hazard. Offshore winds can break off miles- wide pans of ice, stranding large numbers of fishers. Just such a circumstance occurred in Lake Erie in February 2009, with 100 fishers having to be rescued by helicopters, local authorities, and the Coast Guard. One man who had fallen into the water died on the rescue flight."Man Dies and Scores Are Rescued From Erie Ice Floe" by Liz Robbins, with Chris Maag in Sandusky, OH, The New York Times, 2-7-09. Retrieved 2-7-09. On March 28, 2013 as many as 220 ice anglers were trapped on break-away sea ice floes in the Gulf of Riga (Latvia), necessitating a full-scale rescue operation which employed helicopters and hovercrafts. A similar operation, usually of lesser scale, is typically required each year due to anglers' recklessness.Beachgoers stranded on Latvia ice floes Late-winter warm spells can destroy the texture of the ice, which, while still of the required thickness, will not adequately support weight. It is called "rotten ice" or soft ice and is exceedingly dangerous. Some ice anglers will continue to fish, since even with the bad ice normally 8 inches (20 cm) is more than enough. Fishers may carry a self-rescue device made of two spiked handles connected by a string to pull themselves out of the water and onto the ice. Many cars, trucks, SUVs, snowmobiles, and fish houses fall through the ice each year. Current environmental regulations require the speedy recovery of the vehicle or structure in this situation. Divers must be hired, and when the trouble occurs far from shore, helicopters may be employed for hoisting. Other risks associated with ice fishing include carbon monoxide poisoning from fish house heaters and frostbite due to prolonged exposure to wind and low temperatures, although most new houses are fitted with air exchange systems that allow air flow, preventing poisoning. Contests A participant at The Brainerd Jaycees Ice Fishing Extravaganza Participants of large Finnish ice fishing competition Miljoonapilkki in 2005. Ice fishing contests offer prizes for the largest number of fish caught within a limited time period, many offer a prize for the biggest fish caught as well. The current world's largest contest, the Brainerd Jaycees Ice Fishing Extravaganza, is held on Gull Lake, north of Brainerd, Minnesota, in January of each year. The contest has over 15,000 anglers and drills over 20,000 holes for the contest. In recent years, the money this contest raises for charity has risen to $150,000. Lake Simcoe in Canada has abundant cold water fish such as lake trout, herring and whitefish. It is sometimes known as Canada's ice fishing capital. In Hwacheon, South Korea, a large ice fishing festival is held every January. The Ice Festival draws nearly a million visitors every year, and thousands of people have taken part in a contest to catch fish in a frozen Hwacheoncheon(a tributary of the Han River). See also *Ice jigger References External links * Category:Fishing techniques and methods fishing Category:Minnesota culture Category:Water ice "
"John Richard Jefferies (6 November 1848 – 14 August 1887) was an English nature writer, noted for his depiction of English rural life in essays, books of natural history, and novels. His childhood on a small Wiltshire farm had a great influence on him and provides the background to all his major works of fiction. Jefferies's corpus of writings covers a range of genres and topics, including Bevis (1882), a classic children's book, and After London (1885), a work of science fiction. For much of his adult life he suffered from tuberculosis, and his struggles with the illness and with poverty also play a role in his writing. Jefferies valued and cultivated an intensity of feeling in his experience of the world around him, a cultivation that he describes in detail in The Story of My Heart (1883). This work, an introspective depiction of his thoughts and feelings about the world, gained him the reputation of a nature mystic at the time, but it is his success in conveying his awareness of nature and people within it, both in his fiction and in essay collections such as The Amateur Poacher (1879) and Round About a Great Estate (1880), that has drawn most admirers. Walter Besant wrote of his reaction on first reading Jefferies: "Why, we must have been blind all our lives; here were the most wonderful things possible going on under our very noses, but we saw them not."Besant (1905), 167. Life and works Coate farm in 1896. The roof was originally thatched.Looker and Porteous (1965), 4, cite a letter by James Jefferies: "My old house was originally thatch. ... I have not seen it since Blue Slates as been put on." =Early life= John Richard Jefferies (he used the first name only during his childhood)Thomas (1909), 29. was born at Coate in the parish of Chiseldon, near Swindon, Wiltshire, the son of a farmer, James Luckett Jefferies (1816–1896).Rossabi (2004). His birthplace and home is now a museum open to the public. James Jefferies had the farm from his father, John Jefferies, who had been a printer in London before returning to Swindon to run the family mill and bakery. Richard's mother, Elizabeth Gyde (1817–1895), always called Betsy, was the daughter of John Jefferies's binder and manager. These relationships are mirrored in the characters of Jefferies's late novel Amaryllis at the Fair (1887); and the portraits of the family in the novel tally with external accounts of the Jefferies.Besant (1905), 5; 14–16; Thomas (1909), 24–5; 28–29; Rossabi (2004). James Jefferies, like Iden in Amaryllis, was devoted to his garden, while struggling to make a financial success of the farm. The garden, lovingly recalled in Wood Magic and Amaryllis, also made a strong impression on the memories of those who knew the Jefferies at the time.Besant (1905), 4; Thomas (1909), 29–30. Betsy, like Iden's wife, seems to have been dissatisfied with life on the farm: "a town- bred woman with a beautiful face and a pleasure-loving soul, kind and generous to a fault, but unsuited to a country life." The farm was very small, with of pasture; and a mortgage of £1500 would later begin a slide into debt for James Jefferies, who lost the farm in 1877 and became a jobbing gardener.Rossabi (2004) But these difficulties were less evident in Richard's childhood. The situation was much as in After London (1885), where the farming and gardening Baron is again based on James Jefferies:After London, Chapter 4, cited in Thomas (1909), 47. "The whole place was thus falling to decay, while at the same time it seemed to be flowing with milk and honey". One part of the Jefferies family is strikingly missing from the books. In Wood Magic, Bevis and Amaryllis, the hero (or heroine) has no siblings; only After London gives the main character brothers and depicts the imperfect sympathy between them. James and Elizabeth's first child, Ellen, had died young; but Richard had two younger brothers and a younger sister. Jefferies spent several of his earlier years, between the ages of four and nine, with his aunt and uncle, the Harrilds, in Sydenham, where he attended a private school, returning to Coate in the holidays.Besant (1905), 27–8; Thomas (1909), 39; Rossabi (2004). His uncle, Thomas Harrild, was a son of the printing innovator Robert Harrild. Jefferies kept a close friendship with Mrs. Ellen Harrild (nee Gyde) and his letters to her are an important source for biographers. At Coate, he spent most of his time in the countryside; and much of what he narrates of Bevis is true of himself. His father had taken him shooting when he was eight; and already at nine he had shot a rabbit. He was soon spending much of his time hunting (both with a gun and with snares) and fishing.Thomas (1909), 39; 41–2; Looker and Porteous (1965), 16. He also, like Bevis, added home-made rigging to a boat to sail on the reservoir; and he is said to have built his own canoe, like the hero of After London.Besant (1905), 29–30; Thomas (1909), 40. At the same time, he became a keen reader: favourite books included Homer's Odyssey, Percy's Reliques, Don Quixote and James Fenimore Cooper's The Pathfinder, which served as a model for mock battles fought on a field between the farm and the reservoir.Thomas (1909), 45–6. In November 1864, at the age of sixteen, he and a cousin, James Cox, ran off to France, intending to walk to Russia. (Cox, slightly older than Jefferies, worked for the Great Western Railway and had a little money saved.) After crossing the channel, they soon found that their schoolboy French was insufficient and returned to England. Before they reached Swindon, they noticed an advertisement for cheap crossings from Liverpool to America and set off in this new direction. The tickets however, did not include the cost of food; and the boys were forced to return to Swindon after an attempt to pawn their watches had drawn the attention of the police.Besant (1905), 50–3; Thomas (1909), 46–7. Jefferies in 1872Jefferies left school at fifteen and at first continued his habits of solitary wanderings about the local countryside. He dressed carelessly and allowed his hair to grow down to his collar. This, with his "bent form and long, rapid stride made him an object of wonder in the town of Swindon. But he was perfectly unconscious of this, or indifferent to it."Besant (1905), 57; Thomas (1909), 56; 65; Looker and Porteous (1965), 54. He helped little on the farm (his only enthusiasm was for chopping and splitting wood) and was regarded as something of an idler. The gun that he always carried drew the suspicion of local landowners – one said, "That young Jefferies is not the sort of fellow you want hanging about in your covers".Thomas (1909), 47–9. Finally, early in 1866, he started work as a newspaper reporter for the North Wiltshire Herald.Thomas (1909), 50. For several years he worked as a reporter, contributing not only to the North Wiltshire Herald, but also to the Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard and to the Swindon Advertiser.Besant (1905), 60; Thomas (1909), 74. The editor of the Swindon Advertiser, William Morris, an antiquarian and local historian, lent Jefferies books and encouraged his early writing attempts.Besant (1905), 54–5; 60; Thomas (1909), 55. Jefferies himself developed an antiquarian interest in the countryside: he published articles on local history in the North Wiltshire Herald and was the first to notice a stone circle near Coate Farm. He was also spending much time on the downs, particularly at the iron age hill fort, Liddington Castle, where he would lie on the grass, ecstatically feeling and seeking a connection with the natural world.Thomas (1909), 20; 57–8; Rossabi (2004). In September 1867 and July 1868 he was very ill. In retrospect the illnesses were clearly the first symptoms of the tuberculosis that would kill him. He emerged from them weakened and very thin – "My legs are as thin as a grasshopper's", he wrote to his aunt. Illness also prompted some reconsideration of his own character: he was going to be "not swell but stylish" in future, since people set so much store by appearance.Besant (1905), 70–5; Thomas (1909), 61–3; Rossabi (2004). He was now actively pursuing a career as a writer, writing a history of the Goddards, a local family, and Reporting, Editing, and Authorship: Practical Hints for Beginners in Literature (1873), in which he shared the fruits of his brief experience as a local reporter. Meanwhile the novels he was writing could not find a publisher.Thomas (1909), 74–8. What national attention he attracted was instead from a series of letters to The Times on the Wiltshire agricultural labourer, published in November 1872. The letters, like his other writings from this period, reflect the Conservative outlook of his upbringing.Thomas (1909), 80–3. In 1874, the year of his first published novel, The Scarlet Shawl, he married Jessie Baden (1853–1926), the daughter of a nearby farmer. After living for a few months at Coate Farm, the couple moved to a house in Swindon in 1875 (its current address is 93 Victoria Road); and their first child, Richard Harold Jefferies, was born there on 3 May.Thomas (1909), 96; Rossabi (2004). =First successes= Essays While in Swindon, Jefferies had found it difficult to seek publication or employment with London publishers;Besant (1905), 83–5. and early in 1877, with Jessie and their baby son Harold, he moved to a house at what is now 296 Ewell Road, Tolworth, near Surbiton.Thomas (1909), 111; Rossabi (2004). (There is a wooden plaque commemorating this by the entrance to Surbiton Library.Literary Surrey Page 72) The area was then at the limits of London's growth. Jefferies spent much time wandering through the nearby countryside; and these walks would later provide the material for Nature Near London (1883).Thomas (1909), 111–5. Anemone leaf from Round About a Great Estate, described in chap. 5. Smith, Elder & Co. used the emblem in subsequent editions of Jefferies's books.Miller and Matthews (1993), 232. The Surbiton years were momentous. The couple's next child, a daughter called Jessie after her mother (but known by her second name, Phyllis), was born (on 6 December 1880), and Jefferies began to make his name at last. His new surroundings defined him, both to himself and others, as a country writer. Articles drawing on Jefferies's Wiltshire experiences found a ready market in The Pall Mall Gazette. First came a series of essays based on his friendship with the keeper of the Burderop estate, near Coate, The Gamekeeper at Home, collected as a book in 1878. The book was well received and Jefferies was compared with the great English nature writer, Gilbert White. Three more collections followed the same pattern of publication in The Pall Mall Gazette and then in book form: Wild Life in a Southern County and The Amateur Poacher (both 1879), and Round About a Great Estate (1880). Another collection, Hodge and his Masters (1880), brought together articles first published in the Standard. In the few years that Jefferies took to write these essays, his literary skill developed rapidly: The Amateur Poacher in particular is regarded as a major advance on the earlier works, the first in which he approaches the autobiographical subject matter that is behind his best works.Thomas (1909), 132; Keith (1965), 64 "It is, in my opinion, easily the best of the country books, and this judgment would not, I think, be disputed by most readers". A minor novel, Greene Ferne Farm (1880), was the first to gain recognition, both from contemporaries and in later scholarship.Miller and Matthews (1993), 202 on its contemporary reception; Leavis (1989), 262, "Greene Ferne Farm is the best of his early novels comparable with the Hardy of Under the Greenwood Tree." The Bevis books Two books of these years form a sequence. Wood Magic: A Fable (1881) introduces his child-hero, Bevis, a small child on a farm near a small lake, called the "Longpond", clearly Coate Farm and Coate Reservoir. Bevis's exploration of the garden and neighbouring fields brings him into contact with the country's birds and animals, who can speak to him, as can even inanimate parts of nature, such as the stream and the wind. Part of the book is a depiction of a small child's interaction with the natural world, but much is a cynical animal fable of a revolt against the magpie Kapchack, the local tyrant. In Bevis (1882), the boy is older, and the fantasy element, by which animals can talk, is quite absent. Rather, we have realistically related adventures of Bevis and his friend Mark, fighting a mock battle with other local children, rigging a boat and sailing to an island on the lake (which they call "The New Sea"), fishing and even shooting with a homemade gun. =Illness and death= Onset In December 1881, Jefferies began to suffer from his until then undiagnosed tuberculosis, with an anal fistula. After a series of painful operations, he moved to West Brighton to convalesce. About this time he wrote his extraordinary autobiography, The Story of My Heart (1883). He had been planning this work for seventeen years and, in his words, it was "absolutely and unflinchingly true". It was not an autobiography of the events of his life, but an outpouring of his deepest thoughts and feelings. Articles about the Surbiton area were reprinted in the popular Nature Near London (1883), although the last chapters of the book refer to Beachy Head, Ditchling Beacon and other Sussex landmarks. In Brighton, his third child, Richard Oliver Launcelot Jefferies, was born on 18 July 1883. But his life was to be a short one. Jefferies moved to Eltham, then in Kent, now a part of Greenwich, in June 1884, and here, early in 1885, the child died suddenly of meningitis. Jefferies was so affected that he could not attend the funeral.Looker and Porteous (1965), 169, quoting Jefferies's son Harold, "His sufferings were so great that they prevented him from attending the funeral ... The agonized expression on father's face, as he stood at the open door, watching the little procession move away, haunted my mind for many years"; Rossabi (2004). After London Jefferies's next novel, After London (1885), can be seen as an early example of "post-apocalyptic fiction": after some sudden and unspecified catastrophe has depopulated England, the countryside reverts to nature, and the few survivors to a quasi-medieval way of life. The book has two parts. The first, "The Relapse into Barbarism", is the account by some later historian of the fall of civilisation and its consequences, with a loving description of nature reclaiming England: fields becoming overrun by forest, domesticated animals running wild, roads and towns becoming overgrown, the hated London reverting to lake and poisonous swampland. The second part, "Wild England", is largely a straightforward adventure set many years later in the wild landscape and society (here too Jefferies was setting an example for the genre); but the opening section, despite some improbabilities, has been much admired for its rigour and compelling narrative. Critics dissatisfied with the second part often make an exception of chapters 22–24, which go beyond recreation of a medieval world to give a disturbing and surreal description of the site of the fallen city.Thomas (1909), 256 "[The Relapse into Barbarism] reveals an unsuspected strength of remorseless logic and restraint"; Fowles (1980), xviii–xix; Miller and Matthews (1993), 440. Jefferies's interest in catastrophes predates After London: two short unpublished pieces from the 1870s describe social collapse after London is paralysed by freak winter conditions. In the better achieved of these, the narrator is a future historian piecing the story together from surviving accounts.Fowles (1980), x (the fragment, called The Great Snow by Looker, is given in an appendix to the same edition, 243-8); Miller and Matthews (1993), 432–3. The fantasy of the second part also has a predecessor in a short work, The Rise of Maximin, Emperor of the Occident, serialised in The New Monthly Magazine in 1876, in this case an adventure set in a remote and imaginary past.Fowles (1980), xi–xv; Miller and Matthews (1993), 33–6, 431–2. Although the society that Jefferies depicts after the fall of London is an unpleasant one, with oppressive petty tyrants at war with each other, and insecurity and injustice for the poor, it still served as an inspiration for William Morris's utopian News from Nowhere (1890). In a letter of 1885, he writes of his reaction to After London: "absurd hopes curled around my heart as I read it."Fowles (1980), vii–viii. After London also influenced M.P. Shiel's post-apocalyptic novel, The Purple Cloud."In writing The Purple Cloud, Shiel drew heavily on another fine novel, Richard Jefferies' After London".John Sutherland, "Introduction" to The Purple Cloud, Penguin Classics, 2012. Final years After Eltham, Jefferies lived briefly in various parts of Sussex, first at Rotherfield, then in a house on Crowborough Hill. In Crowborough Jefferies completed his most ambitious and most unusual novel, Amaryllis at the Fair (1887). Closely based on his own family at Coate, it describes a farm and a family imperceptibly approaching disaster. There is little narrative development; instead significant or typical moments are presented in short scenes or even tableaux.Cf. Besant (1905), 151–2 (on the later novels generally); Keith (1965), 139–43, particularly 139, citing a letter of Jefferies: "I originally intended this book to form a series of scenes from country life and so proposed to call it Scenes from Country Life ... The idea of calling it a novel was secondary." Illness and resulting lower productivity had impoverished Jefferies; and the editor Charles Longman suggested an application to the Royal Literary Fund. At first Jefferies resisted the suggestion, regarding aid from aristocratic patrons not involved in literary work as humiliating: "Patrons of literature! was there ever such a disgrace in the nineteenth century? Patrons of literature! The thing is simply abominable!" Longman finally succeeded in convincing Jefferies that the fund was "assisted by everybody who had made any success in literature". An application was accepted and the committee voted a grant of one hundred pounds. Another fund arranged by Longman enabled Jefferies to move nearer to the sea, at Goring, a suburb of Worthing.Looker and Porteous (1965), 198–202. There, on 14 August 1887, he died of tuberculosis and exhaustion. He is buried in Broadwater and Worthing Cemetery in Worthing. After his death a number of posthumous collections were made of his writings previously published in newspapers and magazines, beginning with Field and Hedgerow (1889), edited by his widow. New collections have appeared since then, but even now not all his writings have been gathered and reprinted. Influence and reputation Early works included three by Henry Stephens Salt: *Richard Jefferies: A Study (1894) *Richard Jefferies: His Life and His Ideas (1905) *The Faith of Richard Jefferies (1906) J. S. Fletcher wrote several novels about English rural life modelled on Jefferies' work,beginning with The Wonderful Wapentake (1894). Jefferies's works inspired Henry Williamson to take up writing ; Williamson edited a collection of Jefferies's writings with a title that indicates the great regard that he held for Jefferies: *Richard Jefferies : Selections of his Work with details of his Life and Circumstances, his Death and Immortality (1947) Other writers who admired Jefferies included David Garnett,D. Garnett, Great Friends, Portraits of seventeen writers (London: Macmillan, 1979), 58. Edward Thomas (who wrote his biography), Leslie Paul, Ethel Mannin, Morris (2006) 14. John Fowles, Henry Miller,Morris (2006) 314. Raymond Williams, Jeff VanderMeer and Ludovic Kennedy.Ludovic Kennedy, All in the Mind 1999, (p.268-69). Canadian poet John Newlove published "Inscription to Richard Jefferies on a Sarsen at Barbury" in The Tasmanian Devil & Other Poems. The Richard Jefferies Bird Sanctuary in Surbiton commemorates him.Natural England, Local Nature Reserves, The Wood and Richard Jefferies Bird Sanctuary Published books by Jefferies The following list is necessarily selective. Much of Jefferies's writing was not published in book form in his lifetime. Many works surviving in manuscript or only published in journals have been published piecemeal by various editors since his death. Since his contributions to journals were generally anonymous, identification is often a problem. For a fuller survey, see Miller and Matthews (1993). =Books published in Jefferies's lifetime= *The Scarlet Shawl (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1874) *Restless Human Hearts (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1875) *World's End (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1877) *The Gamekeeper at Home (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1878) (reissued by Cambridge University Press, 2009; ) *Wild Life in a Southern County (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1879) *The Amateur Poacher (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1879) (reissued by Cambridge University Press, 2009; ) *Greene Ferne Farm (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1880) *Hodge and His Masters (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1880) *Round About a Great Estate (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1880) *Wood Magic (London: Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co., 1881) *Bevis: the Story of a Boy (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1882) *Nature Near London (London: Chatto & Windus, 1883) *The Story of My Heart: An Autobiography (London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1883) *Red Deer (London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1884) *The Life of the Fields (London: Chatto & Windus, 1884) *The Dewy Morn (London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1884) *After London; Or, Wild England (London: Cassell & Company, Ltd., 1885) *The Open Air (London: Chatto & Windus, 1885) *Amaryllis at the Fair (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1887) =Posthumous publications= Only the first of these (produced by his widow) was planned by Jefferies. *Field and Hedgerow; Being the Last Essays of Richard Jefferies (London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1889) *The Toilers in the Field (London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1892) *The Early Fiction of Richard Jefferies, ed. G. Toplis (London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co Ltd., 1896), somewhat bowdlerisedMiller and Matthews (1993), 569. *Jefferies' Land: A History of Swindon and its Environs, ed. G. Toplis (London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co Ltd., 1896) *The Hills and the Vale, collected and introduced by E. Thomas (London: Duckworth & Co, 1909) * "The Rise of Maximin: Emperor of the Orient", first published in serial form in 'The New Monthly Magazine' (1876-7), (Oxfordshire: Petton Books, 2012). . * "The Farmer's World: Richard Jefferies' Agricultural Journalism in the late 1870s". A collection of Jefferies's articles published in the Livestock Journal. Published by Petton Books, 2016, * "Ben Tubbs Adventures" (Norfolk: Petton Books, 2016). Jefferies's earliest work of fiction. Secondary literature * Arkell, Reginald, Richard Jefferies and His Countryside, Herbert Jenkins, 1946. * Banerjee, Jacqueline, Literary Surrey, John Owen Smith (2005). pp. 55–56, 64–72. * Walter Besant, The Eulogy of Richard Jefferies (London: Chatto and Windus, 1888, fourth impression 1905). * John Fowles, "Introduction", in R. Jefferies, After London (Oxford: OUP, 1980), vii–xxi. * W. J. Keith, Richard Jefferies, A Critical Study (London: University of Toronto Press, 1965). * Q. D. Leavis, "Lives and works of Richard Jefferies", Scrutiny 6 (1938) 435-46, reprinted in Collected Essays Vol. 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 254–64. * S. J. Looker and C. Porteous, Richard Jefferies, Man of the Fields (London: John Baker, 1965). * H. Matthews and P. Treitel, The Forward Life of Richard Jefferies (Oxford: Petton Books, 1994). * H. Matthews and P. Treitel, Richard Jefferies: An Index (Longcot: Petton Books, 2008). * H. Matthews and R. Welshman, "Richard Jefferies: An Anthology" (Longcot: Petton Books, 2010). * G. Miller and H. Matthews, Richard Jefferies, A bibliographical study (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1993). * B. Morris, Richard Jefferies and the Ecological Vision (Oxford: Trafford Publishing, 2006). * A. Rossabi, "(John) Richard Jefferies (1848–1887)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: OUP, 2004). * A. Rossabi, A Peculiarly English Genius, or a Wiltshire Taoist: A Biography of Richard Jefferies, The Early Years, 1848-1867 (Foulsham, Norfolk UK: Petton Books, 2017). * A. Rossabi, A Peculiarly English Genius, or a Wiltshire Taoist: A Biography of Richard Jefferies, The Years of Struggle, 1867-1876 (Foulsham, Norfolk UK: Petton Books, 2020). * A. Rossabi, Richard Jefferies: a Miscellany (Cambridge: Galileo Books, 2019). * A. Smith, The Interpreter: a biography of Richard Jefferies (Swindon: Blue Gate Books, 2008). . * B. Taylor, Richard Jefferies (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982) * E. Thomas, Richard Jefferies: His Life and Work (London: Hutchinson, 1909). * K. Tryon, "Adventures in the Vale of the White Horse: Jefferies Land" (Longcot: Petton Books, 2010). * H. Sheehan, Jill Carter: "'The Cunning Spider"' (Swindon: BlueGate Books, 2007). Footnotes External links * Richard Jefferies Society * The Old House at Coate: Jefferies Museum Development Project Category:1848 births Category:1887 deaths Category:19th- century British journalists Category:19th-century English people Category:British male journalists Category:English children's writers Category:English nature writers Category:English science fiction writers Category:Environmental fiction writers Category:Environmental journalists Category:Pantheists Category:People from Swindon Category:Philosophy of mind literature Category:Victorian novelists Category:Victorian poets "