Old nature books: the series

There's something, perhaps many things, missing from modern nature writing. I find them in old nature books.

We've become detached and clinical in our observations of the natural world. We've lost whimsical curiosity and replaced it with a rigid idea of needing to be "scientific".

We still get things wrong, of course. Read Lucy Cooke's Bitch, for instance, to see ways that misogynistic ideas continue to lead us astray and examples of the biases and straightforward untruths that continue about our fellow creatures. We also don't know that what we think is true is wrong until we do. So, there's really hardly any improvement in the accuracy of our texts, meaning the loss of love has been for little cause.

Even today's most warm-hearted conservation writers fail to envelop me in the magical curiosity of old nature books.

I think this has many causes. Increasing disdain for anthropomorphism is one (for my thoughts on why anthropomorphism as a very concept is ridiculous, see here). Others include referring to beings as objects, refusing to take a position on certain things, and defaulting to lab study results rather than including field observations, thereby portraying species as an homogenous group rather than individuals.

Ideas that humans are superior to other creatures are as old as time (or at least as old as some religions) but modern times have brought increasing arrogance. Our nature writing now so often paints the picture thus: we stand in a brightly lit lab with the knowledge of all of the natural world available to us, arranged in neat grey filing cabinets. Each book feels like a man in a clean white coat reaching into the filing cabinet and handing you a manila folder with a fact sheet in.

The picture I see in old nature books is a cosy reading room, dusty books lining the walls, wet raincoats hanging on the back of the door fresh from a walk to observe the creatures we write about and, all around, plenty of dark nooks and corners. The writer leans in, the smell of autumn still on their clothes, and tells you a story about the moorhen they saw up a tree.

I've simplified and exaggerated the differences, but I'm convinced there's been an evolution in nature writing and I'm not sure it's one I'm fond of. So, I'm setting out to try to identify exactly what it is about old nature books that mesmerises me.

Join me as I delve into nature books past and present and break them down like an over-zealous English Literature student.

The series so far

The Nature Book (1913), on frogs

The Observer's Guide to Wild Animals (1958), introduction and Moles