Women On Nature

There has, in recent years, been an explosion of writing about place, landscape and the natural world. But within this blossoming of interest, women’s voices have remained very much in the minority.

Katharine has sifted through the pages of women’s fiction, poetry, household planners, gardening diaries and recipe books to show the multitude of ways in which they have observed the natural world about them, from the fourteenth-century writing of the anchorite Julian of Norwich to the seventeenth-century travel journal of Celia Fiennes; from the keen observations of Emily Brontë to a host of brilliant contemporary voices including Jan Morris, Jackie Kay and Jini Reddy.

For the very first time, she has created a landmark anthology Women in Nature collecting together the work of women, over the centuries and up to the present day, who have written about the natural world in Britain, Ireland and the outlying islands of our archipelago.

Alongside the traditional forms of the travelogue, the walking guide, books on birds, plants and wildlife, embraces alternative modes of seeing and recording that turn the genre on its head.

Katharine is author of The Fish Ladder that was shortlisted for the 2016 Wainwright Prize and selected as a Book of the Year in the Guardian, the Telegraph and the Observer. She has contributed to the Observer, the Guardian, the Telegraph, The Washington Post and Caught by the River Magazine.

What women are saying about nature