Spring

Melissa Harrison is a writer and nature lover whose first novel Clay (2013) won the Portsmouth First Fiction prize, was selected for Amazon’s ‘Rising Stars’ programme and named by Ali Smith as a book of the year. Her second, At Hawthorn Time (2015), was shortlisted for the Costa Best Novel Award and chosen by the Telegraph as one of their Books of the Year; both books are as much about the natural world as they are about people. She writes the Nature Notebook in The Times and regularly speaks about conservation, literature, and the very fertile ground between the two.Wherever you are there is a Wildlife Trust caring for wildlife and wild places near you. There are 47 Wildlife Trusts covering the UK all working for an environment rich in wildlife for everyone – on land and at sea. Together The Wildlife Trusts give millions of people the chance to connect with nature. You can support our work by joining your Wildlife Trust wildlifetrusts.org/join.

"A book to live with and to love... features a wonderfully various array of poetry and prose, from Chaucer to the present day, that allows us to see the arrival and the passing of our most fecund season (and those who have written about it) in fresh and stimulating ways." -- Matthew Adams, Independent; '[A] tremendous, soul-lifting collection ... a profound evocation of what rejuvenation means to the winter-stunned psyche'-Lucy Jones, BBC Wildlife Magazine; "The cover of this book is absolutely striking... I couldn't wait to look inside. It is so full of life... Full of perfectly mixed passages of the wonders of nature, this is a book I will turn to each year as the vivacious season of spring approaches." -- The Book Magnet; "A very lovely object ... I was captivated by the writing. These were the words of people who wanted to share their experiences of the world around them; some of them wrote to inform, some of them wrote to celebrate, and of course the very best of them did both ... There is nothing in it that doesn't deserve its place, and I can think of nothing that should be there but isn't. It would make a lovely Easter gift. It's a book that I know I will enjoy revisiting." -- Beyondedenrock.com; "Everything about this book, from Lynn Hatzius' gorgeous cover, to the rich cream of the pages, to the meticulously selected content is an invitation ... to taste the Spring in the air, to hear the grasses grow, to lose yourself in a vast sky or to watch the farmers at work. The book, like a sparkling Spring stream swollen with meltwater, is just begging for you to dip in." - Richard Littledale, blogger; "An anthology edited by Melissa Harrison was never going to stick to [the] beaten track ... important is her imaginative commissioning of new works and choice of previously published pieces. There are several refreshing novelties in this book ... Serves to remind us that the future of nature writing - if we must use the label - is under no threat." - Laurence Rose, thelongspring.com

• CONTENTS; Introduction by Melissa Harrison ix; Annie Worsley 1; George Orwell 5; Reverend Gilbert White 10; Edward Thomas 12; Shamshad Khan 17; D. H. Lawrence 18; Thomas Furly Forster 23; Jo Sinclair 24; Adelle Stripe 28; Alexi Francis 30; Edward Step 32; Alan Creedon 35; Reverend Francis Kilvert 37; Alice Hunter 39; Anon. 42; Dylan Thomas 44; Rob Cowen 47; Thomas Hardy 52; Caroline Greville 53; Kenneth Grahame 57; Thomas Furly Forster 60; Kate Long 61; Richard Jefferies 64; Sir John Lister-Kaye 68; James Common 71; Felicia Hemans 73; David North 75; Thomas Furly Forster 79; Miriam Darlington 80; Clare Leighton 85; Jo Cartmell 89; H. E. Bates 92; Vijay Medtia 96; Jane Austen 99; Ryan Clark 100; A. E. Housman 103; Peter Cooper 104; Reverend Gilbert White 108; Will Cohu 110; Elliot Dowding 114; Robert Browning 117; Richard Jefferies 118; Stephen Moss 124; Thomas Furly Forster 127; Ginny Battson 129; Geoffrey Chaucer 132; Melissa Spiers 133; Dorothy Wordsworth 135; Reverend Francis Kilvert 137; Melissa Harrison 138; Peter Tate 140; Chris Foster 143; R. D. Blackmore 146; Sue Croxford 150; Edward Thomas 153; Alison Uttley 154; William Shakespeare 159; Katie Halsall 160; Charlotte Bronte 163; Nicola Chester 165; Gerard Manley Hopkins 169; Sir Edward Grey 170; Reverend Gilbert White 174; Mary Russell Mitford 177; Paul Ashton 180; Philip Larkin 184; Lucy McRobert 185; Author Biographies 188