Charles Waterton was the first conservationist who fought to protect wild nature against the destruction and pollution of Victorian industrialisation. During his lifetime he was famous for his eccentricities but also for his achievements and his opinions. A Yorkshire landowner he turned his park into a sanctuary for animals and birds. As an explorer he learned to survive in the tropical rain forests of South America without a gun or the society of other white men. He was an authority on the poisons used by South American Indians and a taxidermist of note. The huge public that read his books included Dickens Darwin and Roosevelt. Since his death the memory of Waterton's personal eccenticities has flourished while the originality of his ideas and work has often suffered. Using his surviving papers Julia Blackburn has redressed the balance in a biogr aphy that restores Waterton to his place as the first conservationist of the modern age.
Charles Waterton was the first conservationist who fought to protect wild nature against the destruction and pollution of Victorian industrialisation. During his lifetime he was famous for his eccentricities but also for his achievements and his opinions. A Yorkshire landowner he turned his park into a sanctuary for animals and birds. As an explorer he learned to survive in the tropical rain forests of South America without a gun or the society of other white men. He was an authority on the poisons used by South American Indians and a taxidermist of note. The huge public that read his books included Dickens Darwin and Roosevelt. Since his death the memory of Waterton's personal eccenticities has flourished while the originality of his ideas and work has often suffered. Using his surviving papers Julia Blackburn has redressed the balance in a biogr aphy that restores Waterton to his place as the first conservationist of the modern age.
Über den Autor
Julia Blackburn has written a number of books of non-fiction, fiction and poetry. Time Song was shortlisted for the Wainwright Book Prize, Threads won the East Anglian Book of the Year Award and the New Angle Prize, Thin Paths was shortlisted for the Costa Prize for Biography, and The Three of Us won the J.R. Ackerley Award. Her two novels, The Book of Colour and The Leper's Companions, were both shortlisted for the Women's Prize. She lives in Suffolk and Italy.
