JEFFERIES, (JOHN) RICHARD

born Nov. 6, 1848, near Swindon, Wiltshire, Eng. died Aug. 14, 1887, Goring-by-Sea, Sussex English naturalist, novelist, and essayist whose prophetic vision was unappreciated in his own Victorian age but has been increasingly recognized and admired since his death. By combining detailed observation with a mystic apprehension of nature, he was a master both of a straightforward descriptive style and of a sensuous, poetic prose. The son of a yeoman farmer, Jefferies in 1866 became a reporter on the North Wilts Herald, seeking escape whenever possible in the open space of the Wiltshire Downs. From his experiences as a reporter came Hodge and His Masters (1880), a classic record of Victorian countrymen, from the landowner to the labourer. In 1872 he became famous for a 4,000-word letter to The Times about the Wiltshire agricultural labourer and his lot, containing such arresting detail that the London newspaper published it in full. Soon periodicals and papers (notably the Pall Mall Gazette) were publishing his sketches and articles. In 1874 Jefferies married and in 1877 moved nearer to Londonby this time supporting his wife and two children by writing. The years 1882 to his death in 1887 were his most creative, though he was both ill and poor. Outstanding are Bevis: The Story of a Boy (1882), one of the best boys' books in English, which includes memories of Coate Farm, his birthplace (now Richard Jefferies Museum), and its surrounding countryside; and The Story of My Heart (1883), his autobiography, which tells his dream of a fairer way of life than that he had seen in the slums of Swindon and London. In this late period also he wrote some moving essays in an introspective style, collected in The Life of the Fields (1884), The Open Air (1885), and Field and Hedgerow (1889). He also dictated a novel, Amaryllis at the Fair (1887), which is sometimes compared to Thomas Hardy's regional novels. Earlier novels by Jefferies include the beautiful Dewy Morn, 2 vol. (1884), and Green Ferne Farm (1880).