"Selborne from the Hanger," by Edmund Hort New

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Selborne from the Hanger

Edmund Hort New

1900

White, facing p. 3

The 1900 edition of Gilbert White's The Natural History of Selborne shows the village, nestling below a "long hanging wood" (4). The book as a whole was deemed to take the "most delightful form that can be imagined. The attraction lies chiefly in finding the masterpiece so admirably illustrated by Mr. Edmund H. New. In black and white line work of this class he has no equal. — Country Life,/span>, qtd. in White (following p. 528)

See below for text illustrated.

Scanned image and text by Jacqueline Banerjee.

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Excerpt from The Natural History of Selborne

The high part of the south-west consists of a vast hill of chalk, rising three hundred feet above the village, and is divided into a sheep-down, the high wood and a long hanging wood, called the Hanger. The covert of this eminence is altogether beech, the most lovely of all forest trees, whether we consider its smooth rind or bark, its glossy foliage, or graceful pendulous boughs. The down, or sheep-walk, is a pleasing park-like spot, of about one mile by half that space, jutting out on the verge of the hill-country, where it begins to break down into the plains, and commanding a very engaging view, being an assemblage of hill, dale, wood-lands, heath, and water. The prospect is bounded to the south-east and east by the vast range of mountains called the Sussex Downs, by Guild-down near Guildford, and by the Downs round Dorking, and Ryegate [Reigate] in Surrey, to the north-east, which altogether, with the country beyond Alton and Farnham, form a noble and extensive outline.

At the foot of this hill, one stage or step from the uplands, lies the village, which consists of one single straggling street, three- quarters of a mile in length, in a sheltered vale, and running parallel with the Hanger. The houses are divided from the hill by a vein of stiff clay (good wheat-land), yet stand on a rock of white stone,1 little in appearance removed from chalk ; but seems so far from being calcareous, that it endures extreme heat. Yet that the freestone still preserves somewhat that is analogous to chalk, is plain from the beeches which descend as low as those rocks extend, and no further, and thrive as well on them, where the ground is steep, as on the chalks. [4]

Link to Related Material

Richard Jefferies and other British Nature Writers — Gilbert White, William Cobbett, and W.H. Hudson

Bibliography

White, Gilbert. The Natural History of Selborne. Ed. Grant Allen. Illustrated by Edmund H. New. London and New York: John Lane, the Bodley Head, 1900. Internet Archive, from a copy in the University of California Libraries. Web. 8 July 2023.

Created 8 July 2023