Editing Richard Jefferies (section)

====Onset====

In December 1881, Jefferies began to suffer from his until then undiagnosed tuberculosis, with an [[anal fistula]]. After a series of painful operations, he moved to West [[Brighton]] to convalesce.<ref name="Rossabi 2004"/> About this time he wrote his extraordinary autobiography, ''[[The Story of My Heart]]'' (1883). He had been planning this work for seventeen years and, in his words, it was "absolutely and unflinchingly true". It was not an autobiography of the events of his life, but an outpouring of his deepest thoughts and feelings.

Articles about the Surbiton area were reprinted in the popular ''Nature Near London'' (1883), although the last chapters of the book refer to [[Beachy Head]], [[Ditchling Beacon]] and other [[Sussex]] landmarks.

In Brighton, his third child, Richard Oliver Launcelot Jefferies, was born on 18 July 1883. But his life was to be a short one. Jefferies moved to [[Eltham, London|Eltham]], then in [[Kent]], now a part of [[Royal Borough of Greenwich|Greenwich]], in June 1884, and here, early in 1885, the child died suddenly of [[meningitis]]. Jefferies was so affected that he could not attend the funeral.<ref>Looker and Porteous (1965), 169, quoting Jefferies's son Harold, "His sufferings were so great that they prevented him from attending the funeral ... The agonized expression on father's face, as he stood at the open door, watching the little procession move away, haunted my mind for many years"; Rossabi (2004).</ref>