Reviews for Natural History of Selborne

The average rating for Natural History of Selborne based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-06-06 00:00:00 Marina Maniatis Wonderfully bonkers from start to finish! Of course, The Natural History of Selborne is a nature classic. And yes it is, for its attention to minute observations of Nature and its creation of a new approach to study. But it can also be read as a sort of autobiography of White himself. And on this level it becomes a hooting owl of a book. White is wonderfully pompous and righteous, patriarchal and misogynistic, all you would expect an C18 Divine to be. The parson-naturalist has a fallen approach to the Creation-- shoot it and eat it. One short passage paraphrases as: saw a rare bird, didn't know what it was, shot at it, missed it, because the little sod kept jumping up and down. White's investigation into sound, the search for a "polyglot" Echo in a hollow vale, is pure mock-heroic-- though it is meant to be deadly serious, of course. Parts are as funny as Sterne. Nothing like a man on his hobby horse to create humour amidst Creation. The Natural History of Selborne fills a void between the Augustans and the Romantics, a vacancy which White fills admirably with inspiration and wind.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-08-29 00:00:00 Doug O'toole Gilbert White's classic, best in an illustrated edition like Century (1988), can be read like the Bible, a few paragraphs a day to muse on. Or one sentence: "The language of birds is very ancient and like other ancient modes of speech, very elliptical; little is said, but much is meant and understood." I read White's Selbourne, and mused on it so, while traveling in Dorset and writing my Birdtalk (2003). GW takes you into another world, the world where quotidian life--the appearance of migratory birds, the Tortoise Timothy in the root garden--was prized, not avoided by iphones and fast transport and vague urgencies. White is the Thoreau of England, a solitary observer of the first rank. But unlike Thoreau the cantankerous Romantic recluse and tax-refuser, White was a sociable minister, an Eighteenth-Century man. Both Thoreau and White write with inimitable precision and joy at discovery. Both were transcendental, White in the traditionsl Christian manner. The Solomon of Canticles revived in Selbourne and at Walden.