Stories of Trees, Woods, and Forests

Trees have starred in stories ever since Ovid described the nymph Daphne's metamorphosis into a laurel, and the landscape of literature has long been enlivened by wild woodlands, sacred groves, and fertile orchards. This delightful collection ranges from Ovid to Austen and from Robin Hood's Sherwood Forest (via Thomas Love Peacock's Maid Marian) to Washington Irving's 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow'. Here are forest-haunted fairy tales both classic (the Brothers Grimm) and inventively retold (Angela Carter). There is room in these woods for comedy as well as terror, in Stella Gibbons's Cold Comfort Farm, and Alexander McCall Smith's 'Head Tree'. Notable writers from around the world contribute arboreal fiction-from South Africa, Finland, France, Zimbabwe, Russia, Martinique, and India, as well as Britain, Ireland, Canada and America. From Daphne du Maurier's 'The Apple Tree' to R. K. Narayan's 'Under the Banyan Tree', the sheer range of stories in these pages will leave readers refreshed and dazzled.

About the author

Professor Fiona Stafford is a Fellow of the British Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She works on literature of the Romantic period, especially Austen, Burns, Clare, Keats, Wordsworth and Coleridge, and on their literary influences on modern poetry. She is a regular commentator on ratio.

Summary

Trees have starred in stories ever since Ovid described the nymph Daphne's metamorphosis into a laurel, and the landscape of literature has long been enlivened by wild woodlands, sacred groves, and fertile orchards.

Product details

• Authors: Fiona Stafford, Various
• Assisted by: Fiona Stafford (Editor), Stafford Fiona (Editor)
• Publisher: Everyman's Library UK
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 07.10.2021
• EAN: 9781841596310
• ISBN: 978-1-84159-631-0
• No. of pages: 480
• Dimensions: 123 mm x 189 mm x 36 mm
• Series: Everyman's Library POCKET CLASSICS
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Non-fiction book > Nature, technology > Nature: general, reference works; Trees, wildflowers & plants, Trees, wildflowers and plants: general interest, FICTION / Nature & the Environment