Winter

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.

"A carefully selected compilation of undeniably gripping extracts and specially commissioned pieces ... the final book in a fantastic series designed to celebrate the seasons"-LandLove magazine; "Be inspired on a winter walk by writers who adore the frosty season" - Country Walking magazine; "Compelling reading ... what is original about this collection is not just the diversity of relatively unknown talent on show, but the quality of the work" - Tom Mooney, Wexford Echo; "To open its covers is to open onto a landscape which you have not yet crossed and to feel yourself beckoned in. It might be an intellectual landscape - littered with strange formations of thought-rocks you have never encountered. It might be an emotional landscape - bathed in the colour of an unfamiliar sky. It might even be a spiritual one, animated by the sound of an unheard yet strangely familiar melody. ... This book will take you from mountain heights to urban jungle, and from the back of a cow shed to the slippery deck of an 18th Century sailing ship. ... If you want a book to help reduce your heating bills this Winter, this could be it. The cosy effect of curling up with it will work wonders." -- Richard Littledale, blogger; "Packed with good writing ... a good mixture of familiar and unfamiliar" - Mark Avery; "Just adorable... it's the most beautiful writing. Makes you feel in keeping with the seasons" - Karen Gimson, BBC Radio Leicester; "Alive and vibrant, both in the imagery it evokes and in the feelings it arouses. Without doubt Winter, that most enigmatic of seasons, comes gloriously alive in this lovely anthology. The editor, Melissa Harrison, has done a commendable job of keeping this quartet of anthologies completely relevant, with each seasonal interpretation allowing a heartening and thoughtful meditation into the true meaning of Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter" - jaffareadstoo.blogspot.co.uk

• CONTENTS; Introduction by Melissa Harrison vii; Roger Deakin 1; Hartley Coleridge 4; Annie Worsley 5; Samuel Taylor Coleridge 9; Lucy Jones 11; Edward Step 13; Caroline Greville 15; Thomas Furly Forster 18; Jen Hadfield 19; Charles Dickens 21; Reverend Gilbert White 23; Nicholas Breton 25; Elizabeth Gardiner 26; William Shakespeare 29; John Fowles 30; Chris Foster 31; Richard Jefferies 34; Kate Blincoe 38; Kristian Evans 40; Andrea Levy 42; Anon. 44; Satish Kumar 46; Thomas Furly Forster 51; Nicola Chester 52; Julian Beach 55; Christina McLeish 58; Joseph Addison 61; Patrick Barkham 63; Ronald Blythe 67; Nick Acheson 69; Louis MacNeice 71; Jini Reddy 72; Thomas Furly Forster 75; Liz Berry 76; Henry Tegner 79; Wilhelm Nero Pilate Barbellion 83; Nakul Krishna 84; Adrian Bell 88; Al Alvarez 91; R. S. Thomas 93; Reverend Gilbert White 94; Richard Adams 95; Mary Leapor 97; Matt Gaw 99; Virginia Woolf 101; Iain Green 104; Thomas Furly Forster 108; Jacqueline Bain 109; Anna Laetitia Barbauld 113; Jane Adams 114; Jack Clemo 117; Elizabeth Guntrip 118; Sir Edward Grey 121; Henry Williamson 123; David North 126; James Joyce 130; Emma Kemp 132; William Wordsworth 134; Robert Macfarlane 137; Brian Carter 141; Janet Willoner 145; John Clare 148; Sheila Stewart 149; Sophie Bagshaw 154; Dr Rob Lambert 157; Robert Louis Stevenson 161; Jon Dunn 163; Reverend Gilbert White 167; Thomas Hardy 168; Lucy McRobert 170; Thomas Furly Forster 172; Clare Leighton 173; Tiffany Francis 177; Bethany Pope 180; Claire Thurlow 182; Edward Step 186; Ann MacCarthy 187; Olaudah Equiano 191; Matt Poacher 192; Edmond Holmes 195; Anita Sethi 196; Kathleen Jamie 202; Author Biographies 204