The story of English culture over a thousand years can be told as the story of changing ideas about the weather. In a sweeping panorama, Weatherland allow us to witness cultural climates on the move, exploring how writers and artists, looking up at the same skies and walking in the same brisk air, have felt very different things. Alexandra Harris builds her remarkable account from small evocative details and catches the distinct voices of compelling individuals. 'Bloody cold', says Jonathan Swift in the 'slobbery' January of 1713. Percy Shelley wants to become a cloud, and John Ruskin wants to bottle one.
Weatherland is a celebration of English air and a life-story of those who have lived in it.
Chosen as Book of the Year by The Times, Sunday Times, Observer, Independent and Times Literary Supplement.
By:
Alexandra Harris
Imprint: Thames & Hudson
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 198mm,
Width: 129mm,
Weight: 410g
ISBN: 9780500292655
ISBN 10: 0500292655
Publication Date: 01 July 2016
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
A Mirror in the Sky • Tesserae • I. 1. The Winter-Wise • 2. Forms of Mastery • 3. Imported Elements • 4. Weathervane • II. 5. ‘Whan that Aprill...’ • 6. Month by Month • 7. Secrets and Signs • 8. A Holly Branch • 9. ‘Why fares the world thus?’ • III. 10. Splendour and Artifice • 11. Shakespeare: Inside-Out • IV. 12. Two Anatomists • 13. Sky and Bones • 14. Milton’s Temperature; A Pause: On Freezeland Street • V. 15. Method and Measurement • 16. Reasoning with Mud • 17. A Language for the Breeze • 18. Dr Johnson Withstands the Weather • 19. Day by Day • VI. 20. Poets in the Storm • 21. Wordsworth: Weather’s Friend; A Flight: In Cloudland • VII. 22. Shelley on Air • 23. The Stillness of Keats • 24. Clare’s Calendar • 25. Turner and the Sun; VIII. • 26. Companions of the Sky • 27.‘Drip, Drip, Drip’: Varieties of Gloom • 28. Ruskin in the Age of Umber • 29. Rain on a Grave; IX. • 30. Bright New World • 31. Greyscale • 32. Too Much Weather; Flood
Reviews for Weatherland: Writers and Artists under English Skies
' years to come may be the last of English weather . If so, there is consolation in the thought that the damp glory of our island climate will live on in the works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Constable and Turner' - Daily Mail 'Splendid ... its glory is in the detail, in its recording of facts and lives, atmospheres and words, quirks of feeling and behaviour' - A. S. Byatt, Guardian 'Gathers all the written English centuries and sets them dancing to the seasons on the head of its pin' - Ali Smith, Times Literary Supplement 'A brilliant, beautiful and sensual book' - Sunday Times 'A dazzling journey through the weather-worlds of English culture and history' - Robert Macfarlane 'A fascinating portrait of that most British of preoccupations' - Independent
- Short-listed for Ondaatje Prize 2016
- Shortlisted for Ondaatje Prize 2016.
