Richard Jefferies defies easy literary categorization. Labels such as essayist, journalist, novelist, rural observer, naturalist, and mystic have all been applied to this British writer who chronicled nineteenth-century rural life, including the adventures of his own boyhood. His two novels of childhood, Wood Magic: A Fable (1881) and Bevis: The Story of a Boy (1882), effectively portray the interactions of a boy and his natural surroundings. Although the books retained their popularity for more than half a century, they are likely to be read today primarily by scholars interested in Jefferies' influence on such later writers for children as Kenneth Grahame and Arthur Ransome.

John Richard Jefferies was born at Coate Farm in Wiltshire on 6 November 1848. Coate Farm was part of an agricultural society in the throes of vast social changes. The town of Swindon, two miles distant, which developed into a major rail center, exemplified the mechanization that would...