Weatherland by Alexandra Harris

Weatherland by Alexandra Harris

Writers and artists across the centuries, from Chaucer to Ian McEwan, and from the creator of the Luttrell Psalter in the 14th century to John Piper in the 20th, looking up at the same skies and walking in the same brisk air, have felt very different things and woven them into their novels, poems and paintings. Alexandra Harris’s subject is not the weather itself, but the weather as it is daily recreated in the human imagination. She builds her remarkable story from small evocative details and catches the distinct voices of compelling individuals: ‘Bloody cold’, says Jonathan Swift in the ‘slobbery’ January of 1713; Percy Shelley wants to become a cloud and John Ruskin wants to bottle one… Weatherland is both a sweeping panorama of cultural climates on the move and a richly illustrated, intimate account – for although weather is vast, it is experienced physically, emotionally and spiritually; as Harris cleverly reveals, it is at the very heart of English life and culture.

'A fascinating portrait of that most British of preoccupations' - Independent
'A dazzling journey through the weather-worlds of English culture and history' - Robert Macfarlane
'A brilliant, beautiful and sensual book' - Sunday Times
'Gathers all the written English centuries and sets them dancing to the seasons on the head of its pin' - Ali Smith, Times Literary Supplement
'Splendid … its glory is in the detail, in its recording of facts and lives, atmospheres and words, quirks of feeling and behaviour' - AS. Byatt, Guardian
'Lovely, lyrical' - Daily Mail

Alexandra Harris studied at Oxford and at the Courtauld Institute in London, and worked at Christie's for a year before returning to Oxford to write a doctorate on art and literature in the 1930s. She is now a lecturer in English at the University of Liverpool, running courses on Modernism and American writing, and leading the MA in Contemporary Literature. Her first full-length book, Romantic Moderns, published by Thames & Hudson, was the winner of the 2010 Guardian First Book Award. Alexandra Harris was also a winner in the BBC's 'New Generation Thinkers' contest in 2011.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780500292655
ISBN 10	0500292655
Title	Weatherland
Author	Alexandra Harris
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Thames & Hudson Ltd
Year published	2016-07-14
Number of pages	432
Prizes	Short-listed for Ondaatje Prize 2016
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable