Birds of Selborne

The letters of the eminent naturalist Gilbert White are full of precise, unaffected and delightful observations of the wildlife of his beloved village of Selborne, describing the habits, colours and songs of birds from lapwings to barn-owls, wrens to house-martins. Here too are exquisite writings on trees, fossils, bats and rainfall, filled with intellectual curiosity and joy in the natural world. Generations of inhabitants have helped shape the English countryside - but it has profoundly shaped us too.It has provoked a huge variety of responses from artists, writers, musicians and people who live and work on the land - as well as those who are travelling through it.English Journeys celebrates this long tradition with a series of twenty books on all aspects of the countryside, from stargazey pie and country churches, to man's relationship with nature and songs celebrating the patterns of the countryside (as well as ghosts and love-struck soldiers).

Gilbert White (1720-93) was born in his grandfather's vicarage at Selborne, Hampshire. After studying at Oriel College, Oxford, White spent much of the next fifteen years travelling around England but always returned home. Birds of Selborne is taken from his famous work The Natural History of Selborne, a compilation of his correspondences with Thomas Pennant and Daines Barrington, and reputedly the fourth most published book in the English language.