Weatherland

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

In a sweeping panorama, Weatherland allows us to witness England's cultural climates across the centuries. Before the Norman Conquest, Anglo-Saxons living in a wintry world wrote about the coldness of exile or the shelters they had to defend against enemies outside. The Middle Ages brought the warmth of spring; the new lyrics were sung in praise of blossoms and cuckoos. Descriptions of a rainy night are rare before 1700, but by the end of the eighteenth century the Romantics had adopted the squall as a fit subject for their most probing thoughts.



The weather is vast and yet we experience it intimately, and Alexandra Harris builds her remarkable story from small evocative details. There is the drawing of a twelfth-century man in February, warming bare toes by the fire. There is the tiny glass left behind from the Frost Fair of 1684, and the Sunspan house in Angmering that embodies the bright ambitions of the 1930s. Harris 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 a celebration of English air and a life story of those who have lived in it.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Introduction: A Mirror in the Sky (p. 7)
• Tesserae (p. 18)
• I
• The Winter-Wise (p. 26)
• Forms of Mastery (p. 35)
• Imported Elements (p. 40)
• Weathervane (p. 46)
• II
• 'Whan that Aprill...' (p. 51)
• Month by Month (p. 60)
• Secrets and Signs (p. 72)
• A Holly Branch (p. 78)
• 'Why fares the world thus?' (p. 81)
• III
• Splendour and Artifice (p. 87)
• Shakespeare: Inside-Out (p. 101)
• IV
• Two Anatomists (p. 117)
• Sky and Bones (p. 123)
• Milton's Temperature (p. 139)
• A Pause: On Freezeland Street (p. 146)
• V
• Method and Measurement (p. 161)
• Reasoning with Mud (p. 175)
• A Language for the Breeze (p. 182)
• Dr Johnson Withstands the Weather (p. 196)
• Day by Day (p. 204)
• VI
• Coleridge and the Storm (p. 219)
• Wordsworth: Weather's Friend (p. 228)
• A Flight: In Cloudland (p. 234)
• VII
• Shelley on Air (p. 249)
• The Stillness of Keats (p. 255)
• Clare's Calendar (p. 265)
• Turner and the Sun (p. 268)
• VIII
• Companions of the Sky (p. 279)
• 'Drip, drip, drip' (p. 291)
• Varieties of Gloom (p. 302)
• Ruskin in the Age of Umber (p. 315)
• Rain on a Grave (p. 321)
• IX
• Bright New World (p. 329)
• Greyscale (p. 350)
• Too Much Weather (p. 372)
• Flood (p. 390)
• Sources of Epigraphs and Notes (p. 394)
• Select Bibliography (p. 419)
• Acknowledgments (p. 424)
• Sources of Illustrations (p. 426)
• Index (p. 428)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

Harris follows up Romantic Moderns, winner of the Guardian First Book Award, with this edifying and rigorous tour of English literature and painting in terms of its depiction of weather. The premise may initially seem quirky and slight, but the author is a brilliant guide and makes a persuasive case for examining how art looks at the skies. She takes readers through the frozen world of early Anglo-Saxon poetry, Shakespeare's tales of winter and midsummer, and the contrast between Jane Austen's characters, who hide indoors from the weather, and Emily Brontë's, who wander out onto the moors to experience it. Throughout, Harris proves a scrupulously close reader of prose and poetry, with an equally insightful eye for paintings. But this is no mere stuffy lit-crit slog: the narrowness of subject affords a deliciously broad scope for mining the rich depths of English letters and art, scientific development, cultural history, religion, and philosophy. The sumptuous reproductions of artworks are worth the price of admission all by themselves. With her keen eye for detail and astonishing ability to trace connections, Harris will change how readers view their relationships to art and the world around them. Agent: Caroline Dawnay, United Agents (U.K.). (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

CHOICE Review

This book will likely change hands many times this year in the form of birthday and holiday presents. It is beautifully produced, with scores of crisp, evocative illustrations (most in color), and (more important) it is beautifully written by a scholar who has thought long and fruitfully about her subject, so even when treating well-known authors, she offers remarkable flashes of insight. Along with her own words, Harris (Univ. of Liverpool, UK) includes translations or paraphrases of difficult older passages, so anyone can follow her commentary. The book has no overarching argument, but no matter. It is a work to savor in small increments--even a 40-page chapter is too rich a feast for one sitting. Harris begins with the treatment of winter in Old English works such as Beowulf and The Wanderer, and her commentary (enriched by quotations from less-known works, e.g., Old English riddles) is unfailingly brilliant and revealing. So too is her chapter on Chaucer and many much less familiar Middle English authors who celebrate spring, though until 1500, that season had no name (other than Lent) in English. On to the present. Harris has produced an utterly superb, enchanting work that will appeal to anyone who cares about England or its literature. Summing Up: Essential. All readers. --Douglas Lane Patey, Smith College