The Dewy Morn

In this two-volume novel Richard Jefferies places a young woman at the center of a story steeped in the open air he loved. Felise is passionate, physically vital, and wholly alive to the natural world, and her devotion to Martial Barnard drives a romance that runs against the grain of respectable convention. Around the love story Jefferies arranges his familiar concerns: the beauty of the downland, the hardship of the rural poor, and the failings of the men who own the land. Less polished than his celebrated nature essays but charged with the same feeling for earth and weather, it shows the novelist reaching toward passion and social protest at the same time. Free PDF and EPUB editions are available here.