By the bestselling author of Storyland . Sheer cliffs, salt spray, explosive sea spume, thunderous clouds, icy waves, whales with mountains on their backs, sleet, bitter winds, bleak, impenetrable marshes, howling wolves, forests, the unceasing cries of birds and the death grip of subterranean vaults that have never seen the these are wild landscapes of a world almost familiar. In Wild, Amy Jeffs journeys - on foot and through medieval texts - from landscapes of desolation to hope, offering the reader an insight into a world at once distant and profoundly close to home. The seven chapters, entitled Earth, Ocean, Forest, Beast, Fen, Catastrophe, Paradise, open with fiction and close with reflection. They blend reflections of travels through fen, forest and cave, with retelling of medieval texts that offer rich depictions of the natural world. From the Old English elegies to the englynion and immrama of the Celtic world - stories that largely represent figures whose voices are not generally heard in the corpus of medieval women, outcasts, animals. Illustrated with original wood engravings, evoking an atmospheric world of whales, wolves, caves, cuckoos and reeds, Tales From Early Medieval Britain will leave readers feeling 'we stendream': delight in the wilderness.
Author
Amy Jeffs is an art historian specialising in the Middle Ages. In 2019, she gained a PhD in Art History from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, having studied for earlier degrees at the Courtauld Institute of Art and the University of Cambridge. She is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. During her PhD Amy co-convened a project researching medieval badges and pilgrim souvenirs at the British Museum. She then worked in the British Library's department of Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern manuscripts. Her writing is often accompanied by her own linocut and wood-engraved prints. Amy is a regular contributor to Country Life Magazine.
