Editing Richard Jefferies (section)

===First successes===

====Essays====

While in Swindon, Jefferies found it difficult to seek publication or employment with London publishers;<ref>Besant (1905), pp. 83–85.</ref> and early in 1877, with Jessie and their baby son Harold, he moved to a house at what is now 296 Ewell Road, [[Tolworth]], near [[Surbiton]].<ref>Thomas (1909), 111; Rossabi (2004).</ref> (There is a wooden plaque commemorating this by the entrance to Surbiton Library.<ref>[http://www.johnowensmith.co.uk/books/lis1873855508.htm Literary Surrey] Page 72</ref>) The area was then at the limits of London's growth. Jefferies spent much time wandering through the nearby countryside; and these walks would later provide the material for ''Nature Near London'' (1883).<ref>Thomas (1909), pp. 111–115.</ref>

[[File:Jefferies' Anemone.jpg|thumb|[[Anemone nemorosa|Anemone]] leaf from ''Round About a Great Estate'', described in chap. 5. Smith, Elder & Co. used the emblem in subsequent editions of Jefferies's books.<ref>Miller and Matthews (1993), p. 232.</ref>]]
The Surbiton years were momentous. The couple's next child, a daughter called Jessie after her mother (but known by her second name, Phyllis), was born (on 6 December 1880),<ref name="Rossabi 2004"/> and Jefferies began to make his name at last. His new surroundings defined him, both to himself and others, as a country writer. Articles drawing on Jefferies's Wiltshire experiences found a ready market in ''[[The Pall Mall Gazette]]''. First came a series of essays based on his friendship with the keeper of the Burderop estate, near Coate, ''The Gamekeeper at Home'', collected as a book in 1878. The book was well received and Jefferies was compared with the great English nature writer, [[Gilbert White]].<ref name="Rossabi 2004"/> Three more collections followed the same pattern of publication in ''The Pall Mall Gazette'' and then in book form: ''Wild Life in a Southern County'' and ''The Amateur Poacher'' (both 1879), and ''Round About a Great Estate'' (1880). Another collection, ''Hodge and his Masters'' (1880), brought together articles first published in the ''Standard''. In the few years that Jefferies took to write these essays, his literary skill developed rapidly: ''The Amateur Poacher'' in particular is regarded as a major advance on the earlier works, the first in which he approaches the autobiographical subject matter that is behind his best works.<ref>Thomas (1909), 132; Keith (1965), p.64 "It is, in my opinion, easily the best of the country books, and this judgment would not, I think, be disputed by most readers".</ref> A minor novel,  ''Greene Ferne Farm'' (1880), was the first to gain recognition, both from contemporaries and in later scholarship.<ref>Miller and Matthews (1993), p.202 on its contemporary reception; Leavis (1989), 262, "''Greene Ferne Farm'' is the best of his early novels comparable with the Hardy of ''Under the Greenwood Tree''."</ref>

====The Bevis books====

Two books of these years form a sequence. ''Wood Magic: A Fable'' (1881) introduces his child-hero, Bevis, a small child on a farm near a small lake, called the "Longpond", clearly Coate Farm and Coate Reservoir. Bevis's exploration of the garden and neighbouring fields brings him into contact with the country's birds and animals, who can speak to him, as can even inanimate parts of nature, such as the stream and the wind. Part of the book is a depiction of a small child's interaction with the natural world, but much is a cynical [[animal fable]] of a revolt against the magpie Kapchack, the local tyrant. In ''Bevis'' (1882), the boy is older, and the fantasy element, by which animals can talk, is quite absent. Rather, we have realistically related adventures of Bevis and his friend Mark, fighting a mock battle with other local children, rigging a boat and sailing to an island on the lake (which they call "The New Sea"), fishing and even shooting with a homemade gun.