Richard Jefferies

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A scholarly edition of a significant and exciting late Victorian science fiction novelRichard Jefferies' After London is uncanny and intriguing, an adventure story, quest romance, dystopia, and Darwinian novel rolled into one, but also a pioneering work of Victorian science fiction. Imagining a mysterious natural catastrophe that plunges its people into a barbaric future, Jefferies' remarkable novel drowns and destroys London and depicts a challenging 'Wild England' dominated by nature and filled with evolved animals and devolved humans. Of its time but also distinctively modern, After London can, in its uneasy expression of Victorian and post-Victorian anxieties about industrial development, urbanisation, natural resources, and climate, be regarded as one of the first novels of the Anthropocene. This new critical edition provides one of the earliest examples of a global catastrophe novel that is part of a flowering of nineteenth-century science fiction. It situates After London in a tradition of mid-late Victorian texts that respond to the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace and responds to a host of other key social, political, and cultural issues of the period. Key FeaturesOpens up readings that situate the text in relation to a range of literary, cultural and biographical contexts including Jefferies' life, ideas, and worksIncludes a chronology of Jefferies' life, a list of his key works, a detailed scholarly introduction, and appendices including the text of 'The Great Snow', a catastrophe short story set in London; and 'Alone in London'; both of which reveal his attitude to London, urban life and the future of humanity

Green rushes, long and thick, standing up above the edge of the ditch, told the hour of the year as distinctly as the shadow on the dial the hour of the day. Green and thick and sappy to the touch, they felt like summer, soft and elastic, as if full of life, mere rushes though they were. On the fingers they left a green scent; rushes have a separate scent of green, so, too, have ferns, very different to that of grass or leaves. Rising from brown sheaths, the tall stems enlarged a little in the middle, like classical columns, and heavy with their sap and freshness, leaned against the hawthorn sprays. From the earth they had drawn its moisture, and made the ditch dry; some of the sweetness of the air had entered into their fibres, and the rushes-the common rushes-were full of beautiful summer. The white pollen of early grasses growing on the edge was dusted from them each time the hawthorn boughs were shaken by a thrush. These lower sprays came down in among the grass, and leaves and grass-blades touched. Smooth round stems of angelica, big as a gun-barrel, hollow and strong, stood on the slope of the mound, their tiers of well-balanced branches rising like those of a tree. Such a sturdy growth pushed back the ranks of hedge parsley in full white flower, which blocked every avenue and winding bird's-path of the bank. But the "gix," or wild parsnip, reached already high above both, and would rear its fluted stalk, joint on joint, till it could face a man. Trees they were to the lesser birds, not even bending if perched on; but though so stout, the birds did not place their nests on or against them. Something in the odour of these umbelliferous plants, perhaps, is not quite liked; if brushed or bruised they give out a bitter greenish scent. Under their cover, well shaded and hidden, birds build, but not against or on the stems, though they will affix their nests to much less certain supports. With the grasses that overhung the edge, with the rushes in the ditch itself, and these great plants on the mound, the whole hedge was wrapped and thickened. No cunning of glance could see through it; it would have needed a ladder to help any one look over.

Reproduction of the original: Wood Magic by Richard Jefferies

Reproduction of the original: Hodge and his Masters by Richard Jefferies

Reproduction of the original: The Gamekeeper at Home by Richard Jefferies

Reproduction of the original: Bevis by Richard Jefferies

Reproduction of the original: The Amateur Poacher by Richard Jefferies

Reproduction of the original: The Open Air by Richard Jefferies

Reproduction of the original: Hodge and his Masters by Richard Jefferies

Reproduction of the original: Wild Life in a Southern County by Richard Jefferies

Reproduction of the original: Round About a Great Estate by Richard Jefferies

Reproduction of the original: After London by Richard Jefferies

Reproduction of the original: The Toilers of the Field by Richard Jefferies