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Field Work: Selected Essays
of Ronald Blythe
Field Work: Selected Essays of Ronald Blythe
- 2007 - Hardback - 320pp - 155x 233mm - Price £16.99 -
ISBN 978-0-9549286-6-7
These essays, written over the last thirty years and published
to celebratethe Benson Medal for Literature awarded to Ronald
Blythe in 2006, are, according to Blythe, "a lingering comment
on my life as a writer. They form a continuous response to what
has been important to me; East Anglia, literature, Anglicanism
and my artist and writer friends." Beginning on his home
patch in Suffolk they move outwards to consider the working environment
of writers with whom Blythe has a natural affinity, notably Coleridge,
Hardy and Clare Blythe has been President of the John Clare
Society for many years. Several of these pieces first appeared
as introductions to classic works of the English countryside and
in them Blythe returns to the harsh realities of life on the land
witnessed by Cobbett, Rider Haggard and Mary Mann; the Broadland
photographer P.H. Emerson and in the working landscapes of Constable
and John Nash Blythe lives in the artist's old farmhouse
on the edge of the Stour valley.
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From
the crumbling cliffs of his native Suffolk Blythe sets out
to explore the remote Celtic outposts of the Cornish coast,
north Wales and the Orkneys in search of their cultural heritage.
Blythe's odyssey, both literary and spiritual, concludes by
revisiting that great tradition of parson diarists Gilbert
White, Parson Woodforde and Francis Kilvert of whom
Blythe is himself the natural successor, and those English
mystics George Herbert, Thomas Traherne and Dame Julian
of Norwich that have been his constant companions. This
wonderful selection illuminates Blythe's unique perspective
on the English countryside and its literature, in prose that
is "full of quiet wit, keen observation and sober reflection." |
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