Alexandra Harris - Weatherland: Writers and Artists Under English Skies

A dazzling journey through the weather-worlds of English culture and history, remarkable for its range of reference and its subtleties of thought A major achievement to have given form to a subject so vast and volatile Robert Macfarlane

A deeply felt, richly observed and brilliantly articulated book Alexandra Harris cant stop the rain but after reading Weatherland no one could doubt that it and everything else meteorological that the Earth throws at us has made us what we are. Prepare to be drenched and delighted in equal measure by the best written downpour England has ever witnessed Tim Dee

A splendid history of writers and painters reflections on the wind, rain and sun its glory is in the detail, in its recording of facts and lives, atmospheres and words, quirks of feeling and behaviour. on every page is something precise and memorable A. S. Byatt, Guardian

Gathers all the written English centuries and sets them dancing to the seasons on the head of its pin Ali Smith, Times Literary Supplement

Lie down in the grass and watch the clouds passing in the company of some of our greatest artists Imaginatively vivid and freshly surprising Rachel Campbell-Johnston, The Times

Wonderful, offbeat exquisitely produced delivers a deluge of detail that will change the way you think about weather forever Claire Lowdon, The Sunday Times

An ambitious, sweeping survey of British art and literature as seen through the lens of clouds, skies, sunshine and drizzle. Carrying her immense knowledge lightly, never emerging as didactic or pedantic, Harris takes us across sodden fields and frosty meadows, through thick mist and into the English mind Andrea Wulf, The New York Times

I cannot love Weatherland enough. Exquisitely illustrated, it has the wit and wonder of an exceptional literary work Philip Hoare, New Statesman

Hugely ambitious, exhilaratingly written and handsomely produced Peter Parker, Times Literary Supplement

A remarkable, encyclopaedic personal survey of literary and artistic responses to English sun and rain and cloud Harris treats her Jovean subject discursively, intelligently and with flair. Weatherland is an uplifting book, like a first spring breeze Sara Wheeler, Guardian

Weatherland has range, heft and undeniable scholarship: it zips through the skies and seasons of just about every big name in the canon, and many minor ones besides rich, erudite and impressive Daily Telegraph

Whether tramping across the ice, dodging April showers, braving wet feet or peering through the fog of centuries, Harris is an inspiring guide: genial and gossipy, scholarly and wry. Her Weatherland should be as essential a part of any walkers kit as a balaclava, sun hat and pac-a-mac Daily Mail

Literary scholarship at its life-enhancing best Read end to end, this scholarly yet accessible book offers a literary historical education in itself. But it works just as well if you open it at random in search of something to match your mood or the weather Independent

Highly original and beautifully crafted a brilliant, beautiful and sensual book In taking a clouds eye view of English art and literature, it ends up being almost cloud-like itself. It is eccentrically shaped, full of subtleties of light and shade, sweepingly solid and wonderful The Sunday Times

A gorgeous piece of writing, sure to grip bibliophiles and the meteorologically inclined alike Harris captures the evanescent interplay of mind and sky Nature

'This is a singularly beautiful book Alexandra Harris exemplifies the best that a humane education has to offer Church Times

Impressively wide-ranging Harris is an excellent compiler of anecdote and evidence The Financial Times

A fascinating portrait of that most British of preoccupations Independent

Fluent and unfaltering an exhaustive and exuberant elegy Spectator

Harris brilliantly shows how our weather has seeped into our art like a damp, winter fog RA Magazine

John Constable, Seascape with Rain Cloud (detail), 1827

John Constable, Seascape with Rain Cloud (detail), c. 1824. Oil on paper laid on canvas, 23.5 32.6 (9 12). Royal Academy of Arts, London

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alexandra Harris won the Guardian First Book Award and a Somerset Maugham Award for Romantic Moderns (2010). Since then she has written a short biography of Virginia Woolf as well as many essays and reviews. As a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Thinker, she has presented programmes on subjects including cold, light and fireworks. She is a Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Liverpool and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She lives in Oxford and Liverpool.

Other titles of interest published by
Thames & Hudson include:

Romantic Moderns

Virginia Woolf

A Writer's Britain

The Wry Romance of the Literary Rectory

The Bloomsbury Cookbook

www.thamesandhudson.com
www.thamesandhudsonusa.com

First published in the United Kingdom in 2015 as
Weatherland: Writers and Artists Under English Skies

ISBN 978-0-500-51811-3
by Thames & Hudson Ltd, 181a High Holborn, London WC1V 7QX
and in the United States of America by
Thames & Hudson Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10110

Weatherland 2015 Alexandra Harris

This electronic version first published in 2015 by
Thames & Hudson Ltd, 181a High Holborn, London WC1V 7QX

This electronic version first published in 2015 in the United States of America by
Thames & Hudson Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10110.

To find out about all our publications, please visit
www.thamesandhudson.com
www.thamesandhudsonusa.com

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

ISBN 978-0-500-77317-8
ISBN for USA only 978-0-500-77318-5

Cover illustration by Stephen Millership
www.stephenmillership.com

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

A MIRROR IN THE SKY

I hope you are better employed
than in gaping after weather.

John Keats

Its December, the week before Christmas. I have rented for a few nights a sixteenth-century tower in the water meadows under the South Downs in East Sussex. The closest village is Laughton, which is not very near Lewes, though the lights on the edge of town become visible in the distance after dark, and every half hour a train goes along beneath the horizon. Leaning out of a high bedroom window, I have a better view of the ditches and sluices carrying water quietly away across the fields in the moonlight.