Table of Contents

A Mirror in the Sky • Tesserae • I. 1. The Winter-Wise • 2. Forms of Mastery • 3. Imported Elements • 4. Weathervane • II. 5. ‘Whan that Aprill...’ • 6. Month by Month • 7. Secrets and Signs • 8. A Holly Branch • 9. ‘Why fares the world thus?’ • III. 10. Splendour and Artifice • 11. Shakespeare: Inside-Out • IV. 12. Two Anatomists • 13. Sky and Bones • 14. Milton’s Temperature; A Pause: On Freezeland Street • V. 15. Method and Measurement • 16. Reasoning with Mud • 17. A Language for the Breeze • 18. Dr Johnson Withstands the Weather • 19. Day by Day • VI. 20. Poets in the Storm • 21. Wordsworth: Weather’s Friend; A Flight: In Cloudland • VII. 22. Shelley on Air • 23. The Stillness of Keats • 24. Clare’s Calendar • 25. Turner and the Sun; VIII. • 26. Companions of the Sky • 27.‘Drip, Drip, Drip’: Varieties of Gloom • 28. Ruskin in the Age of Umber • 29. Rain on a Grave; IX. • 30. Bright New World • 31. Greyscale • 32. Too Much Weather; Flood

Promotional Information

The story of English culture told through the experience of writers and artists, by the winner of the 2010 Guardian First Book Award

About the Author

Alexandra Harris studied at Oxford and at the Courtauld Institute in London, and worked at Christie's for a year before returning to Oxford to write a doctorate on art and literature in the 1930s. She is now a lecturer in English at the University of Liverpool, running courses on Modernism and American writing, and leading the MA in Contemporary Literature. Her first full-length book, Romantic Moderns, published by Thames & Hudson, was the winner of the 2010 Guardian First Book Award. Alexandra Harris was also a winner in the BBC's 'New Generation Thinkers' contest in 2011.

Reviews

'Hugely ambitious, exhilaratingly written and handsomely produced' - Peter Parker, Times Literary Supplement (Book of the Year)

'A brilliant, beautiful and sensual book (and it is a lovely object, with its rich paper and fine illustrations)' - Sunday Times

'Splendid … its glory is in the detail, in its recording of facts and lives, atmospheres and words, quirks of feeling and behaviour' - A. S. Byatt, Guardian

'The British people love talking about the weather. This book should be their bible. Harris' paean to the power and elusiveness of the climate is as sparkling and refreshing as an April shower … Every page is a delight and beautifully illustrated throughout' - Times Higher Education

'Highly original' - Apollo

'In Alexandra Harris’s deeply felt, richly observed and brilliantly articulated book the weathered life of England is superbly on view ... Prepare to be drenched and delighted in equal measure by the best written downpour England has ever witnessed ' - Tim Dee