A Cultural History of the New Nature Writing

Abstract

This article discusses the ‘new nature writing’ and the work of some of its key practitioners: Mark Cocker, Roger Deakin, Kathleen Jamie, Richard Mabey and Robert Macfarlane. The new nature writing focuses on finding meaning not in the rare and exotic but in our common, unremarkable encounters with the natural world, and in combining both scientific, scholarly observation of nature with carefully crafted, discursive writing. In this sense it speaks to a contemporary eco-political moment while critically engaging with the rich history of nature writing and thinking about the environment in Britain from the Romantic era onwards, and particularly since the late 1960s.