Robert Macfarlane
Encyclopedia
Robert Macfarlane, is a British
travel writer and literary critic. Educated at Nottingham High School
, Pembroke College, Cambridge
and Magdalen College, Oxford
, he is currently a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge
, and teaches in the Faculty of English at Cambridge.
, the Somerset Maugham Award
, and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award
. It was shortlisted for the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature
and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize
. It is an account of the development of Western attitudes to mountains and precipitous landscapes, and takes its title from a line by the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins
. Macfarlane's book combines history with first-person narrative. He considers why people are drawn to mountains despite their obvious dangers, and examines the powerful and sometimes fatal hold that mountains can come to have over the imagination. The book owes an undisguised debt to the writings of Simon Schama
and Francis Spufford
, and its heroes include the mountaineer George Mallory
.
Macfarlane's second book was Original Copy: Plagiarism and Originality in Nineteenth-Century Literature, which was published in March 2007. Exploring the difference between creation and invention, the book surveys the "borrowedness" of much Victorian literature, focusing on the writings of George Eliot
, Walter Pater
and Oscar Wilde
, among others.
His third book The Wild Places was published in September 2007. In it he embarks on a series of journeys in search of the wildness that remains in Britain
and Ireland
. The book explores wildness both geographically and intellectually, testing different ideas of the wild against different landscapes, and describes Macfarlane's explorations of forests, moors, salt marshes, mudflats, islands, sea-caves and city fringes. A condensed version of the book was broadcast as Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4
in September 2007. In November 2007, the book won the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature
, and in June 2008 it won the Scottish Arts Council Non-Fiction Book Of The Year Award. In November 2008, it was joint winner of the Grand Prize at the Banff Mountain Festival, North America's equivalent of the Boardman Tasker Prize. It became a bestseller in Britain and The Netherlands, and went on to be shortlisted for six further prizes, including the Dolman Best Travel Book Award
, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award
, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize
, and North America's Orion Book Award, a prize founded "to recognize books that deepen our connection to the natural world, present new ideas about our relationship with nature, and achieve excellence in writing."
, Richard Jefferies
and William Cobbett
, as well as contemporary figures such as John McPhee
, Barry Lopez
and Roger Deakin
. He is generally grouped with a number of recent British writers who have provoked a new critical and popular interest in writing about landscape.
Macfarlane's interests in topography, ecology and the environment have been transmitted through his books but also through newspaper and magazine essays, notably his Common Ground series which was published in The Guardian
in 2005. He has also published reportage and travel essays in magazines including Granta
(issues 90, 101, 102) and Archipelago (issues 1 and 3).
In 2004 Macfarlane sat on the panel of judges for the Man Booker Prize
, which selected Alan Hollinghurst
's The Line of Beauty as that year's winner, and in 2005 he guest-edited and introduced The Mays anthology of new writing.
Macfarlane presented "The Wild Places of Essex", an episode of the BBC Two
Natural World series broadcast in February, 2010; the film later won a Wildscreen Award. He is the patron of the Outdoor Swimming Society, the Outlandia Project and Gateway To Nature, a Lottery-funded mental-health initiative designed to improve access to nature for vulnerable groups and individuals.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
travel writer and literary critic. Educated at Nottingham High School
Nottingham High School
Nottingham High School is a British boys' independent school situated about a mile north of Nottingham city centre. It has around 900 pupils from ages 11 to 18 and there is the adjoining Nottingham High Junior School catering for younger boys and, from September 2008, the Lovell House...
, Pembroke College, Cambridge
Pembroke College, Cambridge
Pembroke College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.The college has over seven hundred students and fellows, and is the third oldest college of the university. Physically, it is one of the university's larger colleges, with buildings from almost every century since its...
and Magdalen College, Oxford
Magdalen College, Oxford
Magdalen College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2006 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £153 million. Magdalen is currently top of the Norrington Table after over half of its 2010 finalists received first-class degrees, a record...
, he is currently a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge
Emmanuel College, Cambridge
Emmanuel College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge.The college was founded in 1584 by Sir Walter Mildmay on the site of a Dominican friary...
, and teaches in the Faculty of English at Cambridge.
Books
Macfarlane's first book, Mountains of the Mind, was published in 2003 and won the Guardian First Book AwardGuardian First Book Award
Guardian First Book Award, issued before 1999 as Guardian Fiction Prize or Guardian Fiction Award, is awarded to new writing in fiction and non-fiction.-History:...
, the Somerset Maugham Award
Somerset Maugham Award
The Somerset Maugham Award is a British literary prize given each May by the Society of Authors. It is awarded to whom they judge to be the best writer or writers under the age of thirty-five of a book published in the past year. The prize was instituted in 1947 by William Somerset Maugham and thus...
, and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award
Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award
The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year award is a literary prize awarded to a British author under the age of 35 for a published work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry...
. It was shortlisted for the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature
Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature
The Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature is an annual prize of £3000 awarded by the Boardman Tasker Charitable Trust to an author or authors for 'an original work which has made an outstanding contribution to mountain literature.' It was established in memory of Peter Boardman and Joe...
and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize
John Llewellyn Rhys Prize
The John Llewellyn Rhys Prize is a literary prize awarded annually for the best work of literature by an author from the Commonwealth aged 35 or under, written in English and published in the United Kingdom...
. It is an account of the development of Western attitudes to mountains and precipitous landscapes, and takes its title from a line by the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. was an English poet, Roman Catholic convert, and Jesuit priest, whose posthumous 20th-century fame established him among the leading Victorian poets...
. Macfarlane's book combines history with first-person narrative. He considers why people are drawn to mountains despite their obvious dangers, and examines the powerful and sometimes fatal hold that mountains can come to have over the imagination. The book owes an undisguised debt to the writings of Simon Schama
Simon Schama
Simon Michael Schama, CBE is a British historian and art historian. He is a University Professor of History and Art History at Columbia University. He is best known for writing and hosting the 15-part BBC documentary series A History of Britain...
and Francis Spufford
Francis Spufford
-Early life:He studied English Literature at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, gaining a BA in 1985.-Career:He was Chief Publisher's Reader from 1987-90 for Chatto & Windus....
, and its heroes include the mountaineer George Mallory
George Mallory
George Herbert Leigh Mallory was an English mountaineer who took part in the first three British expeditions to Mount Everest in the early 1920s....
.
Macfarlane's second book was Original Copy: Plagiarism and Originality in Nineteenth-Century Literature, which was published in March 2007. Exploring the difference between creation and invention, the book surveys the "borrowedness" of much Victorian literature, focusing on the writings of George Eliot
George Eliot
Mary Anne Evans , better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, journalist and translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era...
, Walter Pater
Walter Pater
Walter Horatio Pater was an English essayist, critic of art and literature, and writer of fiction.-Early life:...
and Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
, among others.
His third book The Wild Places was published in September 2007. In it he embarks on a series of journeys in search of the wildness that remains in Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
and Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
. The book explores wildness both geographically and intellectually, testing different ideas of the wild against different landscapes, and describes Macfarlane's explorations of forests, moors, salt marshes, mudflats, islands, sea-caves and city fringes. A condensed version of the book was broadcast as Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
in September 2007. In November 2007, the book won the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature
Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature
The Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature is an annual prize of £3000 awarded by the Boardman Tasker Charitable Trust to an author or authors for 'an original work which has made an outstanding contribution to mountain literature.' It was established in memory of Peter Boardman and Joe...
, and in June 2008 it won the Scottish Arts Council Non-Fiction Book Of The Year Award. In November 2008, it was joint winner of the Grand Prize at the Banff Mountain Festival, North America's equivalent of the Boardman Tasker Prize. It became a bestseller in Britain and The Netherlands, and went on to be shortlisted for six further prizes, including the Dolman Best Travel Book Award
Dolman Best Travel Book Award
The Dolman Best Travel Book Award is one of the two principal annual travel book awards in Britain, and the only one that is open to all writers...
, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award
Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award
The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year award is a literary prize awarded to a British author under the age of 35 for a published work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry...
, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize
John Llewellyn Rhys Prize
The John Llewellyn Rhys Prize is a literary prize awarded annually for the best work of literature by an author from the Commonwealth aged 35 or under, written in English and published in the United Kingdom...
, and North America's Orion Book Award, a prize founded "to recognize books that deepen our connection to the natural world, present new ideas about our relationship with nature, and achieve excellence in writing."
Overview
Macfarlane is seen as the inheritor of a tradition of nature writing which includes John MuirJohn Muir
John Muir was a Scottish-born American naturalist, author, and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States. His letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, have been read by millions...
, Richard Jefferies
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. His childhood on a small Wiltshire farm had a great influence on him and provides the background to all his major works of fiction...
and William Cobbett
William Cobbett
William Cobbett was an English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist, who was born in Farnham, Surrey. He believed that reforming Parliament and abolishing the rotten boroughs would help to end the poverty of farm labourers, and he attacked the borough-mongers, sinecurists and "tax-eaters" relentlessly...
, as well as contemporary figures such as John McPhee
John McPhee
John Angus McPhee is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, widely considered one of the pioneers of creative nonfiction....
, Barry Lopez
Barry Lopez
Barry Holstun Lopez is an American author, essayist, and fiction writer whose work is known for its environmental and social concerns.-Biography:...
and Roger Deakin
Roger Deakin
Roger Stuart Deakin was an English writer, documentary-maker and environmentalist.Deakin was born in Watford, Hertfordshire. Educated at Haberdashers' Aske's and Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he read English, Deakin first worked in advertising as a copywriter and creative director...
. He is generally grouped with a number of recent British writers who have provoked a new critical and popular interest in writing about landscape.
Macfarlane's interests in topography, ecology and the environment have been transmitted through his books but also through newspaper and magazine essays, notably his Common Ground series which was published in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
in 2005. He has also published reportage and travel essays in magazines including Granta
Granta
Granta is a literary magazine and publisher in the United Kingdom whose mission centers on its "belief in the power and urgency of the story, both in fiction and non-fiction, and the story’s supreme ability to describe, illuminate and make real." In 2007, The Observer stated, "In its blend of...
(issues 90, 101, 102) and Archipelago (issues 1 and 3).
In 2004 Macfarlane sat on the panel of judges for the Man Booker Prize
Man Booker Prize
The Man Booker Prize for Fiction is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe. The winner of the Man Booker Prize is generally assured of international renown and...
, which selected Alan Hollinghurst
Alan Hollinghurst
Alan Hollinghurst is a British novelist, and winner of the 2004 Man Booker Prize for The Line of Beauty.-Biography:Hollinghurst was born on 26 May 1954 in Stroud, Gloucestershire, the only child of James Hollinghurst, a bank manager, and his wife, Elizabeth...
's The Line of Beauty as that year's winner, and in 2005 he guest-edited and introduced The Mays anthology of new writing.
Macfarlane presented "The Wild Places of Essex", an episode of the BBC Two
BBC Two
BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
Natural World series broadcast in February, 2010; the film later won a Wildscreen Award. He is the patron of the Outdoor Swimming Society, the Outlandia Project and Gateway To Nature, a Lottery-funded mental-health initiative designed to improve access to nature for vulnerable groups and individuals.
Books with introductions by Macfarlane
- Graham Greene, A Gun For Sale (London: Vintage, 2005)
- Charles Dickens et al., Mugby Junction (London: Hesperus, 2005)
- J. A. Baker, The Peregrine (New York: NYRB Classics, 2005)
- Ian Frazier, Great Plains (London: Granta, 2006)
- John Muir, My First Summer In The Sierra (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2006)
- Tim Robinson, The Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage (New York: NYRB Classics, and London: Faber, 2008)
- Kate RewKate RewKate Rew is a journalist and author who founded the Outdoor Swimming Society. Her bestselling book, "Wild Swim", helped further the recent growth in popularity of wild swimming.-Early life:...
, Wild Swim (Guardian BooksGuardian BooksGuardian Books is the book publishing division of the UK daily newspaper The Guardian and its sister weekly paper The Observer....
, 2008)
- William Daniell, A Voyage Round The Coast of Great Britain (Folio Books, 2008)
- Edward Thomas, The South Country (Dovecote Press, 2009)
- John Christopher, The Death of GrassThe Death Of GrassThe Death of Grass is a 1956 post-apocalyptic science fiction novel written by the English author Samuel Youd under the nom de plume John Christopher...
(Penguin Modern Classics, 2009)
- John Stewart Collis, The Worm Forgives The Plough (Vintage Modern Classics, 2009)
- Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain (Canongate, 2011)
- Rory MacLeanRory MacLeanRory MacLean is a Canadian travel writer living in the UK and Berlin whose best known works are Stalin’s Nose, a black and surreal travelogue through eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and Magic Bus, a history of the Asia Overland hippie trail.-Biography:MacLean was born in...
, Falling For Icarus (IB Tauris, 2011)