Wikipedia Commentary
Also read the 1996 article by our own Cecily Nabors, A Cuckoo Sings in Selborne, in the Washington Post.
This book was first published in 1789 and has never been out of print.
Gilbert White is said by some to be the first ecologist and environmentalist.
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Comments of the venerable Kent Minichielo transmitted by Ken:
The Natural History of Selborne (a Cecily suggestion) is one of the foundation books of the genre of nature writing. Some say that it is the first book of nature essays. Although written in the 18th Century, its syntax and vocabulary are largely coincident with our own. It is one of the most frequently republished works in the English language; and it is one of my favorite books to reread in parts and to reread in its entirety.
Having owned, read, studied, and sold a good sized collection of books by and about White and The Natural History of Selborne, I find myself now possessing only my favorite edition: The Natural History of Selborne (World’s Classics, Oxford UP 1993 available cheap, used online). This paperback edition contains an introduction, notes on the text, bibliography, chronology, the poem by White “The Invitation to Selborne,” end notes, bibliographic notes, GLOSSARY, and index.
Besides being important to the genre of nature writing, it is a source book for ideas typifying English Romanticism and consequently for ideas influencing Americans’ view of nature. For a somewhat critical view of these ideas one can read (or see) Tom Stoppard’s play Arcadia and for a very critical view Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility.
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