New British Nature Writing, or an Emergent Hope

Abstract

Abstract Since the first decade of the twenty-first century, Britain has witnessed the emergence of a new literary movement called “new nature writing.” This paper aims to call attention to new British nature writing as an emergent genre marked by its practitioners’ will to replace anthropocentrism with ecocentrism, present an all-embracing understanding of nature, and interweave the personal with the ecocritical. To this end, it offers insights into selected memoirs of contemporary British writers, including Kathleen Jamie’s essay trilogy Findings, Sightlines, and Surfacing; Amy Liptrot’s The Outrun; and Carol Donaldson’s On the Marshes: A Journey into England’s Waterlands. Such non-fiction first person narratives, labeled as eco-memoirs, may provide an eco-centered approach to the natural world in the Anthropocene, and thus cherish hopes for a livable future for our planet. (HBM)