Weatherland: Writers and Artists under English Skies
Author: Alexandra Harris
Format: Paperback, 129mm x 198mm, 410g, 432 pages
Published: Thames & Hudson Ltd, United Kingdom, 2016
The story of English culture over a thousand years can be told as the story of changing ideas about the weather. In a sweeping panorama, Weatherland allow us to witness cultural climates on the move, exploring how writers and artists, looking up at the same skies and walking in the same brisk air, have felt very different things. Alexandra Harris builds her remarkable account 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 a celebration of English air and a life-story of those who have lived in it.
Chosen as Book of the Year by The Times, Sunday Times, Observer, Independent and Times Literary Supplement.
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.
Author: Alexandra Harris
Format: Paperback, 129mm x 198mm, 410g, 432 pages
Published: Thames & Hudson Ltd, United Kingdom, 2016
The story of English culture over a thousand years can be told as the story of changing ideas about the weather. In a sweeping panorama, Weatherland allow us to witness cultural climates on the move, exploring how writers and artists, looking up at the same skies and walking in the same brisk air, have felt very different things. Alexandra Harris builds her remarkable account 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 a celebration of English air and a life-story of those who have lived in it.
Chosen as Book of the Year by The Times, Sunday Times, Observer, Independent and Times Literary Supplement.
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.