Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Gilbert White, usually tagged ‘of Selborne’, was one of the most enduringly influential writers of the Romantic period. He was ‘of Selborne’ in several senses. He was born there on 18 July 1720 in the vicarage occupied by his grandfather. He grew up there, where his father, trained as a lawyer, had retired in his thirties to enjoy the country, and like his father he roamed the vicinity and knew it intimately. He lived most of his life and died there, on 26 June 1793. It was there that he wrote his Natural History of Selborne , widely celebrated as one of the major works of English literary prose. He was well prepared for this. He was educated partly under the father of Joseph and Thomas Warton, poets and literary historians, whom he knew. In vacations he rode and hunted about the country, a practice he continued at Oriel College, Oxford, though he later decided hunting was justified only for provisions and scientific inquiry. At Oxford he studied Classics and read widely in English literature. On graduating he became a clergyman and a fellow of Oriel, visiting friends and relations around the country, serving as curate at various places, and continuing his records of natural phenomena, which he had begun as a youth. From 1760 he resided in his late father's Selborne house, The Wakes, cultivating the garden, intensifying his observation and recording of local flora and fauna, and ... log in or subscribe to read full text