The Unconscious Teaching of the Country - A re-reading of Bevis: The Story of a Boy
By Graham Stoate
Richard Jefferies was born at Coate near Swindon on 6th November, 1846 [sic]. He began his literary career as a reporter on the North Wilts. Herald in 1866, and wrote later for several magazines and newspapers. Bevis: The Story of a Boy, first published in 1882, and its predecessor, Wood Magic (1881), represent something of a personal landmark for Jefferies: a literary transition from the pure description of his early natural history essays which had established his reputation as a writer, 'to the more enteric style of his later works, culminating in the heady nature mysticism of The Story of My Heart (1883). His two books for children are important works in the history of juvenile literature as early examples of a tendency which rejected the overt didacticism of many Victorian children's novels in favour of a freer and more natural imaginative style. Bevis has offered to generations of young readers that joy in the independent life savoured by numerous heroes from Robinson Crusoe onwards. Jefferies's literary career was tragically brief, for he died on 14th August, 1887, his death certificate recording the cause: 'Chronic Fibroid Phthisis. Exhaustion.'
