“Bevis” is a classic children's novel by English nature writer John Richard Jefferies, first published in 1882. Often called “the British Huckleberry Finn”, “Bevis” is a charming tale of childhood adventure and exploration. This novel is a timeless classic, and it would make for ideal bedtime reading. John Richard Jefferies (1848 – 1887) was an English nature writer. He is famous for his exceptional depictions of English country life in his natural history books, essays, and novels. Most of his major works were inspired by his early life spent on a small farm in Wiltshire, England. Other notable works by this author include: “The Story of My Heart (1883), an exposition of his experience of the world, and “After London” (1885), a fantastic example of classic science fiction. Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.

First comprehensive collection to be devoted to Sir Bevis, the most popular Middle English romance.

“The next day Wordsworth arrived from Bristol at Coleridge’s cottage,” William Hazlitt recalled, “He answered in some degree to his friend’s description of him, but was more quaint and Don Quixote- like . . . there was a convulsive inclination to laughter about the mouth.” Hazlitt presents a Wordsworth who differs from the one we know—and, as Matthew Bevis argues in his radical new reading of the poet, this Wordsworth owed his quixotic creativity to a profound feeling for comedy. Wordsworth’s Fun explores the writer’s debts to the ludic and the ludicrous in classical tradition; his reworkings of Ariosto, Erasmus, and Cervantes; his engagement with forms of English poetic humor; and his love of comic prose. Combining close reading with cultural analysis, Bevis travels many untrodden ways, studying Wordsworth’s interest in laughing gas, pantomime, the figure of the fool, and the value of play. Intrepid, immersive, and entertaining, Wordsworth’s Fun sheds fresh light on how one poet’s strange humor helped to shape modern literary experiment.