28 Facts About Richard Jefferies

John Richard Jefferies was an English nature writer, noted for his depiction of English rural life in essays, books of natural history, and novels.

Richard Jefferies valued and cultivated an intensity of feeling in his experience of the world around him, a cultivation that he describes in detail in The Story of My Heart.

John Richard Jefferies was born at Coate in the parish of Chiseldon, near Swindon, Wiltshire, the son of a farmer, James Luckett Jefferies.

Richard Jefferies's birthplace and home is a museum open to the public.

James Richard Jefferies had the farm from his father, John Richard Jefferies, who had been a printer in London before returning to Swindon to run the family mill and bakery.

One part of the Richard Jefferies family is strikingly missing from the books.

James and Elizabeth's first child, Ellen, had died young; but Richard Jefferies had two younger brothers and a younger sister.

Richard Jefferies spent several of his earlier years, between the ages of four and nine, with his aunt and uncle, the Harrilds, in Sydenham, where he attended a private school, returning to Coate in the holidays.

Richard Jefferies's uncle, Thomas Harrild, was a son of the printing innovator Robert Harrild.

Richard Jefferies kept a close friendship with Mrs Ellen Harrild and his letters to her are an important source for biographers.

Richard Jefferies's father had taken him shooting when he was eight; and already at nine he had shot a rabbit.

Richard Jefferies was spending much of his time shooting, snaring rabbits, and fishing.

Richard Jefferies left school at fifteen and at first continued his habits of solitary wanderings about the local countryside.

Richard Jefferies dressed carelessly and allowed his hair to grow down to his collar.

Richard Jefferies himself developed an antiquarian interest in the countryside: he published articles on local history in the North Wiltshire Herald and was the first to notice a stone circle near Coate Farm.

Richard Jefferies was spending much time on the downs, particularly at the iron age hill fort, Liddington Castle, where he would lie on the grass, ecstatically feeling and seeking a connection with the natural world.

Richard Jefferies was now actively pursuing a career as a writer, writing a history of the Goddards, a local family, and Reporting, Editing, and Authorship: Practical Hints for Beginners in Literature, in which he shared the fruits of his brief experience as a local reporter.

Richard Jefferies spent much time wandering through the nearby countryside; and these walks would later provide the material for Nature Near London.

The couple's next child, a daughter called Jessie after her mother, was born, and Richard Jefferies began to make his name at last.

The book was well received and Richard Jefferies was compared with the great English nature writer, Gilbert White.

Richard Jefferies had been planning this work for seventeen years and, in his words, it was "absolutely and unflinchingly true".

In Brighton, his third child, Richard Oliver Launcelot Jefferies, was born on 18 July 1883.

Richard Jefferies moved to Eltham, then in Kent, now a part of Greenwich, in June 1884, and here, early in 1885, the child died suddenly of meningitis.

Richard Jefferies was so affected that he could not attend the funeral.

Richard Jefferies is buried in Broadwater and Worthing Cemetery in Worthing.

Richard Jefferies' novel After London was a source of inspiration for the band Bird in the Belly's 2022 concept album After the City.

Richard Jefferies' ideas became a inspiration for the conservationist Rachel Carson.

Much of Richard Jefferies's writing was not published in book form in his lifetime.