With Magic in My Eyes: West Country Literary Landscapes

With Magic in My Eyes: West Country Literary Landscapes

by Michael Morpurgo (Foreword), Anthony Gibson (Author), Michael Morpurgo (Foreword), Anthony Gibson (Author), Michael Morpurgo (Foreword)

Synopsis

Nowhere in Britain have memorable words and beautiful places come together to more magical effect than in the West Country. In `With Magic in my Eyes' Anthony Gibson explores the relationships between the region's authors and the landscapes that inspired them, and how each brings depth, perspective and meaning to the other. His literary pilgrimage around the region includes all of the most famous author and landscape associations: Thomas Hardy and Wessex, Coleridge and the Quantocks, RD Blackmore and Exmoor, Henry Williamson and North Devon, and Daphne du Maurier and Cornwall. He also sheds new light on the lives, works and landscape inspirations of less obvious poets and novelists: Ted Hughes, DH Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Rudyard Kipling and Charles Causley. And he rediscovers, among others, the Victorian polymath Sabine Baring-Gould, the Cornish parson Robert Hawker and the Dorset dialect poet William Barnes. With walks to bring authors and landscapes to life, atmospheric photographs, literary criticism and a deep feeling for the land, this is a highly original work which will appeal to anyone who loves the West Country and its literature.

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Quantity

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 288
Edition: 1st Edition
Publisher: Fairfield Books
Published: 24 Oct 2011

ISBN 10: 095685110X
ISBN 13: 9780956851109

Media Reviews
`A wonderful book. A book of exploration. Here we can walk the beautiful and diverse landscapes of the West Country in the writers' footsteps, and thus discover new books and new places. We don't just get to know this inspiring landscape anew; we get to feel it as the writers all did.' - Michael Morpurgo. `A rare book and a glorious one.' - Clive Aslet, Country Life. `A fount of knowledge. I felt as if I was learning something on every page.' - Thomas Hardy Society Journal. `A splendid and proper book, elegantly designed, fluently written and brimming with fascinating content.' - Dartmoor Online.
Author Bio
Anthony Gibson was born in Devon in 1949, the eldest son of the broadcaster and cricket writer Alan Gibson. He read History at The Queen's College, Oxford and spent most of his working life with the National Farmers' Union in the South West, championing the cause of the region's farming community. His first book, `Of Didcot and the Demon - The Cricketing Times of Alan Gibson', was the MCC and Cricket Society's Cricket Book of the Year for 2009. He has followed this with two volumes exploring the relationship of the English landscape to great literature: `With Magic in my Eyes', about the south-west, and `The Coloured Counties', coming up into the heart of England.