‘This sweet, delightful book’: The Natural History of Selborne revisited
Gilbert White’s Natural History of Selborne is a true classic in that it has never been out of print since its first publication in 1789. It was based on the daily journals White kept for years in which he noted first the weather (‘Rain. Rain. Rain’) and wind direction, then the progress of his garden (he was very proud of his cucumbers) and occasional nature notes, usually about birds. Jenny Uglow has chosen to concentrate on one year of these journals, 1781, when he was 60 years old and halfway through writing his Natural History, and to interpolate it with her own observations. But these feel oddly irrelevant since she
