Sarah's Books - Used & Rare

This little item is one of the books I bought in Boston (at Commonwealth Books, $8, nice dust jacket), The Nature Writers: A Guide to Richer Reading by Herbert Faulkner West (Stephen Daye Press 1939), who we already know from his wonderful Modern Book Collecting for the Impecunious Amateur. Well, I'd never seen The Nature Writers before, and this copy has interesting pencil notes and check marks throughout its text - someone obviously took it seriously a few decades ago - so it came home with me. I just got around to looking at it yesterday, and I'm pleased to discover that what he thinks of as nature writing cuts a fairly broad swath through the genres of travel, adventure, history, and whatever else can qualify as furthering an awareness of the natural world and its workings. The book really is no more than a well-annotated reading list, but the short foreword by Henry Beston, whose The Outermost House appears on the list, and West's own introduction put some meat on its bones. The introduction mentions that West based this book on a literature class he taught at Dartmouth. The purpose of this class was "to bring before as many students as possible great books on the out-of-doors, which they may read and collect not only through their four years of college, but as long as they live.... Most of us cannot, in the nature of things, be great travellers and explorers, but with the use of our imagination, and with these books as a guide we can travel to all corners of the earth; we can learn, even though in a desultory fashion, some of the mysteries and marvels of nature." (pp.28-29) I wish I'd been able to sit in on his class! Come to think of it, though, I can - sort of - because of his book.

The book list ranges around through the best of John James Audubon, John Burroughs, Charles Darwin, W.H. Hudson, John Muir, Thoreau, and Gilbert White, but also includes more unusual suspects such as Gertrude Bell, Richard Burton, T.E. Lawrence (West includes his Seven Pillars of Wisdom "for its amazing and penetrating revelation of an amazing people and country.... Surely one of the greatest books of the twentieth century." p.93 - I completely agree, one of my favorite books, simply incredible, a classic, it's in my top 20 of all time!), Apsley Cherry-Garrard, and Freya Stark. I particularly like the previous owner's check marks all through the book, next to titles read. They cover nearly half the book - not bad for a lifetime's worth of reading suggestions. West lists around 250 titles. Though I'd heard of many of them, I came across only a handful I'd actually read. Well, 10 down, only 240 left to go!