Signed collection of his nature writings. [Mountains of the Mind; The Wild Places; The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot; Holloway, with Stanley Donwood & Dan Richards; Landmarks; The Lost Words, with Jackie Morris; Ness, with Stanley Donwood; Underland: A Deep Time Journey; The Lost Spells, with Jackie Morris; Is A River Alive?]

MACFARLANE, Robert.

Published by London: Various publishers, 2003-25

About this Item

First editions, all signed by the author, three works additionally signed by the contributors Jackie Morris and Dan Richards. This representative collection of Macfarlane's writings includes his first book, Mountains of the Mind, the winner of the 2004 Somerset Maugham Award; his acclaimed work of linguistic preservation, The Lost Words; and his latest publication, Is A River Alive? From perilous peaks to ancient woodlands and the subterranean world, Macfarlane's explorations of nature and culture have received widespread popular and critical acclaim. The Lost Words, championing terms such as acorn and bramble which were dropped from the Oxford Junior Dictionary due to lack of use by children, inspired fundraising which placed a copy in every Scottish primary school and all British hospices. "Swimming down a tidal cave in Wales, [Macfarlane] saw at the end of it 'a vast white boulder. shaped roughly like a throne', undocumented, unexplained. A cave in Cumbria, in northern England, was framed by two great guard-stones with a holly tree across the entrance, just like the entrance to Moria in Tolkien. But what he sees is not fantasy. Nor is his whole project to 're-wild' our vocabulary. It is also to stretch our shrunken imaginations, even (he hopes, in the end) to 'irrigate the dry meta-language of modern policy making'. He is the great nature writer, and nature poet, of this generation" (Shippey). Holloway (2013) and Ness (2019) are both first trade editions, each published the previous year in a limited edition by Quive-Smith. The Lost Words is signed by Macfarlane and Morris on the publisher's bookplate. Tom Shippey, "Why You Can't Say Where You Are", Wall Street Journal, 5 Aug. 2016. Together, 10 works, octavos and a quarto. Many illustrations, including colour and photographic. Original bindings with dust jackets (Lost Words issued without jacket). Three vols with "Signed" sticker. A few spine ends bumped; jackets unclipped, a couple of creases, Mountains of the Mind spine sunned, otherwise bright: overall, a near-fine set in like jackets.

Seller Inventory # 183573

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Signed collection of his nature writings. [Mountains of the Mind; The Wild Places; The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot; Holloway, with Stanley Donwood & Dan Richards; Landmarks; The Lost Words, with Jackie Morris; Ness, with Stanley Donwood; Underland: A Deep Time Journey; The Lost Spells, with Jackie Morris; Is A River Alive?]
• Publisher: London: Various publishers, 2003-25
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)