Biographies: Jefferies and Borrow

• Mehrtlg. Werk: Prose writings
• Abtlg. des mehrtlg. Werks: Volume 3
• Band: Volume 3
• Verfasst von: Thomas, Edward [VerfasserIn]
• Titel: Biographies: Jefferies and Borrow
• Mitwirkende: Poster, Jem [HerausgeberIn]
• Verf.angabe: edited by Jem Poster
• Ausgabe: First edition
• Verlagsort: Oxford
• Verlag: Oxford University Press
• Jahr: 2018
• Umfang: xxxix, 553 Seiten
• Illustrationen: Illustrationen
• Format: 24 cm
• Ang. zum Inhalt: Richard Jefferies: His life and work / by Edward Thomas
• Ang. zum Inhalt: George Borrow: The man and his books / by Edward Thomas
• ISBN: 978-0-19-958811-4
• Sprache: eng
• RVK-Notation: HM 4531
• K10plus-PPN: 157762940X

Abstract

The third volume provides the annotated texts of two biographies by Thomas: Richard Jefferies: His Life and Work (1909) and George Borrow: The Man and His Books (1912). A detailed introduction addresses a range of matters relating to the subjects of these two biographies as well as to Thomas's approach to them. Among the topics discussed in relation to Jefferies are: the correspondences between Jefferies' life and Thomas's; the influence of Jefferies on Thomas's thought and writing, including such matters as mystical experience and the passage of time; Thomas's unwarranted anxieties about the quality of the biography; and the high standing of the biography in the century since its publication. Among the topics discussed in relation to Borrow are: Thomas's ambivalence towards his subject; the influence of Borrow on later attitudes to walking and the open air, particularly as these were expressed in literature; the popular and literary interest (again attributable in part to Borrow's influence) in Romani life; and the way in which Thomas's approach to the Borrow biography, with its emphasis on the value of impressions as distinct from facts, chimes with Modernist thinking about the nature of narrative. The edition's extensive notes provide further insights into the texts and their cultural context.