Women on Nature: 100 Voices on Place, Landscape, and the Natural World

Norbury (The Fish Ladder) assembles an entertaining and eclectic anthology of nature writing by women about the “east Atlantic archipelago” or British isles. Noting in her introduction that nature is a fraught and contested term, Norbury takes a loose approach, all in service of pushing back against the fact that “what we think of as nature writing has been associated almost exclusively with men.” The essays, fiction, and poetry that follow thus reflect a wide range of views, and while many selections are contemporary, the historic range is also broad, including contributions from of Julian of Norwich on the Garden of Eden, Margery Kempe on a storm at sea, and a striking snippet of visionary nature writing by Thomasine Pendarves. A number of the essays, such as Nicola Chester’s “Desire Paths,” are about preserving nature, but some of the brightest stray from that path, such as Sara Evans’s essay “Under the Opium Spell,” about the devastating effects of opium cultivation in the British fens in the early 19th century and Dorothy Pilley’s buoyant “Climbing Days,” about her time rock climbing. For readers in search of a new take on the genre, this is a great place to start. (Oct.)