A Year with Gilbert White

The First Great Nature Writer

Jenny Uglow

$55

Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

Faber & Faber
01 January 2026

History of Art & Design Styles; Art Forms; Individual artists, art monographs; Biography: arts & entertainment; Mathematics & Sciences

'Uglow makes us feel the life beyond the facts.'- Guardian'Few can match Uglow's skill at conjuring up a scene, or illuminating a character.' - Sunday Times

'Uglow's style is supremely elegant and often amusingly bathetic, her research exhaustive but lightly worn.'- Financial Times

In 1781, Gilbert White was a country curate in the Hampshire village he had known all his life. Fascinated by the fauna, the flora and the people around him, he kept journals for many years. Now he was halfway through completing his path-breaking Natural History of Selbourne - in print since 1789 , paving the way for later naturalists. No one had written like this before, with such close observation, humour, and sympathy.

Pulsating with curiosity, charm and knowledge, A Year with Gilbert White illuminates this dynamic and subtle man, often called 'the father of ecology'. With his diary to hand we follow the seasons, from bitter frost to summer drought, noting everything from the migration of birds to the sex lives of snails, and the vagaries of local life - an invitation to see the natural world afresh, through eyes forever open to astonishment and wonder.

By: Jenny Uglow
Imprint: Faber & Faber
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Edition: Main
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9780571354184
ISBN 10: 0571354181
Pages: 472
Publication Date: 01 January 2026
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Jenny Uglow writes on literature, art, and social history. Her books include award-winning biographies on Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot, William Hogarth, Thomas Bewick and Edward Lear, as well as group studies including The Lunar Men and the panoramic In These Times: Living in Britain through Napoleon's Wars, 1793-1815. A retired editorial director of Chatto & Windus, and former Chair of the Council of the Royal Society of Literature, she grew up in Cumbria, and she and her husband Steve now live in Borrowdale.

Reviews for A Year with Gilbert White: The First Great Nature Writer

'Whatever Uglow writes about she makes absolutely fascinating.' - Diana Athill 'Jenny Uglow is a uniquely gifted historian. Her style is supremely elegant and often amusingly bathetic, her researches exhaustive but lightly worn... No page is without its intriguing anecdote.' - Financial Times