It is a privilege to have published Stephen Moss’s round-up of nature books for the last three years, including this year’s which was published here yesterday. The number of books covered increases every year and many have said that this year provided not only a bumper crop but also more really good books than usual. I agree.
Tomorrow morning I’ll post my shortlist of my favourite ‘nature’ books of 2020 here, and my book of the year (or actually books of the year as I really couldn’t choose between two books so after a while I stopped trying).
I’ve reviewed 41 books here this year and although there is a big overlap between Stephen’s list and my own they aren’t exactly the same. For example, three of my 8-book shortlist tomorrow, don’t even appear in Stephen’s list and that’s not a criticism of his list it’s just a consequence of the fact that the boundaries of what is a nature book are fuzzy and rather personal (and nobody spots them all).
Between us, Stephen and I have reviewed or mentioned over 60 books and there is one striking thing about the combined list – the gender balance of authorship. None of my 8-book shortlist is authored by a women. Crikey! But then, of the books I’ve reviewed here through the year, five out of six of the authors are male.
Stephen and I chatted about this recently and he was able to look back over the dozen or more years he has been compiling lists of such books and this year is a better year than usual for female authors – in the early 2000s the proportion of female authors was only c5% and it has roughly quadrupled over those year to about 20%.
When you look at the types of books involved then some of them are fieldguides and identification guides and these seem, still, to be very much the preserve of blokes (why? discuss!). Also, a lot of them are bird books which look to me (on no basis of rigorous analysis) to be male-dominated at the moment and more so than botanical, marine or mammal-based books (true? discuss!). But quite a few of them are, in some sense of the word, memoirs, which of their very nature tend to be written by older people whose lives integrate the social norms of the past decades and not necessarily of now. The likes of Jim Crumley, Roy Dennis, Michael McCarthy, Peter Marren, Jeremy Mynott, Ian Newton, Joseph Reicholf, Ian Swingland and Edward Wilson are respected voices because they’ve been around quite a long time; they spent most of their careers in times even more male-dominated than nowadays.
Or it might be that both Stephen and I have a mental block when it comes to female-authored books by dint of being ageing blokes (though Stephen is a few years younger than I (though not very many)). If so, what did we miss out?
The books I review here are a mixture of books sent to me my publishers and books I buy myself. I turn down offers of some books (because they don’t interest me or I’m not remotely qualified to review them) and I never (as far as I can recall) chase books and ask to be sent them. I’ve looked back through emails I’ve had from publishers over the last year or two – roughly speaking three out of four of the publishers’ publicists are women.
Stephen tells me that the participants on his MA course in Travel and Nature writing are, these days, predominantly female – the nature writers of the future?
Here, ahead of tomorrow’s Books of the Year list from me, are the books I have reviewed this year in alphabetical order by author.
A Life on Our Planet: my witness statement and a vision of the future by David Attenborough is published by Witness Books, part of Ebury Publishing, part of Penguin Random House! (review).
Snared by Bob Berzins is published by Bob Berzins (review).
Imperial Mud: the fight for The Fens by James Boyce is published by Icon Books (review).
Pudding-Pokes, Flittermice and Bishy-Barney-Bees: how our ancestors referred to the natural world by Susan Brewer is published by Virtual Valley (review).
Rock Pool: extraordinary encounters between the tides by Heather Buttivant is published by September Publishing (review) .
Britain’s orchids: a field guide to the orchids of Great Britain and Ireland by Sean Cole and Mike Waller is published by Princeton University Press (review).
A Bird A Day by Dominic Couzens is published by Pavilion (review).
Atlas of the Mammals of Great Britain and Northern Ireland by Derek Crawley, Frazer Coomber, Laura Kubasiewicz, Colin Harrower, Peter Evans, James Waggitt, Bethany Smith, Fiona Matthews and the Mammal Society is published by Pelagic Publishing (review).
Cottongrass Summer by Roy Dennis is published by Saraband (review).
Raptor Prey remains: a guide to identifying what’s been eaten by a bird of prey by Ed Drewitt is published by Pelagic (review).
Our House is on Fire: scenes of a family and a planet in crisis by Malena and Beata Ernman and Svanta and Greta Thunberg is published by Allen Lane (review).
This is Not a Drill: an Extinction Rebellion handbook by Extinction Rebellion is published by Penguin books (review).
The Ring Ouzel: a view from the North York Moors by Vic Fairbrother and Ken Hutchinson is published by Whittles Publishing (review).
On the Trail of Wolves: A British adventure in the Wild West by Philippa Forrester is published by Bloomsbury (review).
Under the Stars: a journey into light by Matt Gaw is published by Elliott and Thompson (review).
Bringing Back the Beaver: the story of one man’s quest to rewild Britain’s waterways by Derek Gow is published by Chelsea Green (review).
The Book of Trespass: crossing the lines that divide us by Nick Hayes is published by Bloomsbury (review).
Net Zero: how we stop causing climate change by Dieter Helm is published by Harper Collins (review).
The Pelagic Dictionary of Natural History of the British Isles by Peter Jarvis is published by Pelagic (review) .
Red Sixty Seven: a collection of words and art inspired by Britain’s most vulnerable birds curated by Kit Jewitt is published by the BTO (review).
The Birds they Sang: birds and people in life and art by Stanislaw Lubienski is published by Westbourne Press (review).
Orchard: a year in England’s Eden by Benedict Macdonald and Nicholas Gates is published by William Collins (review).
Bird Senses: how and what birds see, hear, smell, taste, and feel by Graham R. Martin is published by Pelagic (review).
The Consolation of Nature: spring in the time of coronavirus by Michael McCarthy, Jeremy Mynott and Peter Marren is published by Hodder Studio (review).
The Accidental Countryside: hidden havens for Britain’s wildlife by Stephen Moss is published by Guardian Faber Publishing (review).
Uplands and Birds by Ian Newton is published by Harper Collins (review).
His Imperial Majesty: a natural history of the purple emperor by Matthew Oates is published by Bloomsbury (review).
Into the Tangled Bank: in which our author ventures outdoors to consider the British in nature by Lev Parikian is published by Elliot and Thomson (review).
A Vulture Landscape: 12 months in Extremadura by Ian Parsons is published by Whittles Publishing (review).
Life Changing: how humans are altering life on Earth by Helen Pilcher is published by Bloomsbury (review).
English Pastoral: an inheritance by James Rebanks is published by Allen Lane (review).
The Disappearance of Butterflies by Joseph H. Reicholf is published by Polity Press (review).
Birds of the UK Overseas Territories edited by Roger Riddington is published by T & AD Poyser (review).
Framing Nature: conservation and culture by Laurence Rose is published by Gritstone Press (review).
Europe’s Dragonflies: a field guide to the damselflies and dragonflies by Dave Smallshire and Andy Swash is published by Princeton University Press (review).
An Indifference of Birds by Richard Smyth is published by Uniform books (review).
The Law of the Wild: an ecologist’s life by Ian Swingland is published by Ian Swingland (review).
The Common Buzzard by Sean Walls and Robert Kenward is published by T & AD Poyser (review).
The Hedgehog Book by Hugh Warwick is published by Graffeg (review).
Naturalist: a graphic adaptation by Edward O. Wilson, adapted by Jim Ottoaviani and illustrated by C.M. Butzer is published by Island Press (review).
Future Sea: how to rescue and protect the world’s oceans by Deborah Rowan Wright is published by University of Chicago Press (review).
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maybe women are just too busy doing stuff to sit down and write (ha…I’ll get my coat….)
sorry, only joking. Yes, its a serious point, I don’t know why so many books in the field are written by men, other than the proportion probably reflects the true gender bias within naturalists, conservation writers and similar…….but hopefully down the years that will change further as graduates in consevation, writing etc increase the femaleproportion………
As a female (and older female as well) nature writer myself (and one with an English Literature degree, and a former student of Stephen’s) I am fascinated by this gender imbalance. Of course, the usual standard feminist literary critical arguments apply… Louse Bacon’s comment above is not a joke: generally speaking, even in these days of ‘new’ men, women do more of the home/child/elderly parent care etc and have to carve out more writing time for themselves in the same way they have done for years. Virginia Woolf’s Room of One’s Own is not a quaint but out-dated historical concept. And the usual arguments about male predominance in publishing, journalism, literary agencies etc… though I’m not so sure of the statistics there.
However… there’s another argument. I think it very much depends what kind of ‘nature’ writing we are talking about… in books that are nature-focused but with more psychological/emotional or even spiritual leanings, I think there are far more women than men currently writing and indeed being published. I can say a lot more if anyone wants me to – perhaps a guest blog, Mark? – but I could list a dozen published women nature writers, without researching at all.
Daphne – thank you for your first comment here. A guest blog would be welcome – here are the guidelines https://markavery.info/2020/06/26/guest-blogs-are-welcome-here/ Could you list a dozen published women writers missed fropm Stephyen’s round-up though?
I can Mark, yes. Do you want full length book writers, and shall I say a few words about some of them too? I’ve read nearly all of them…
This was an interesting post Mark. I’m a current student of a Stephen’s and have just written an essay on the impact and influence of motherhood on writing in the field. Historically there were very few women who involved their role as mother in their writing research, for many reasons including those outlined by Daphne. However, more contemporary female writers are getting work published, particularly in the nature writing/memoir genre. I’d love to share more of my findings with you, thanks for highlighting this topic.
Caro – Thanks for your first comment here. Write a guest blog https://markavery.info/2020/06/26/guest-blogs-are-welcome-here/
Thanks Mark, will do!
How about Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald? I haven’t read it myself (so far), but I saw her read a section about releasing a swift, during the Cambridge Literary Festival the other day, and it sounded really good.