The Oak Papers

"A profound meditation on the human need for connection with nature, as one man seeks solace beneath the bows of an ancient oak tree."—Peter Wohlleben, author of The Hidden Life of Trees "James Canton knows so much, writes so well and understands so deeply about the true forest magic and the important place these trees have in it. Knowledge and joy."— Sara Maitland, author of How to Be Alone Joining the ranks of The Hidden Life of Trees and H is for Hawk, an evocative memoir and ode to one of the most majestic living things on earth—the oak tree—probing the mysteries of nature and the healing role it plays in our lives. Thrown into turmoil by the end of his long-term relationship, Professor James Canton spent two years meditating [PA1]beneath the welcoming shelter of the massive 800-year-old Honywood Oak tree in North Essex, England. While considering the direction of his own life, he began to contemplate the existence of this colossus tree. Standing in England for centuries, the oak would have been a sapling when the Magna Carta was signed in 1215. In this beautiful, transportive book, Canton tells the story of this tree in its ecological, spiritual, literary, and historical contexts, using it as a prism to see his own life and human history. The Oak Papers is a reflection on change and transformation, and the role nature has played in sustaining and redeeming us. Canton examines our long-standing dependency on the oak, and how that has developed and morphed into myth and legend. We no longer need these sturdy trees to build our houses and boats, to fuel our fires, or to grind their acorns into flour in times of famine. What purpose, then, do they serve in our world today? Are these miracles of nature no longer necessary to our lives? What can they offer us? Taking inspiration from the literary world—Henry David Thoreau, Leo Tolstoy, Katherine Basford’s Green Man, Thomas Hardy, William Shakespeare, and others—Canton ponders the wondrous magic of nature and the threats its faces, from human development to climate change, implores us to act as responsible stewards to conserve what is precious, and reminds us of the lessons we can learn from the world around us, if only we slow down enough to listen.

Beyond the brash modern stereotypes of Essex there exists a landscape that has inspired some of England's finest writing. This book tracks the paths of those literary figures who have ventured into the wilder parts of Essex. Some are illustrious names: Shakespeare, Defoe, John Clare, Joseph Conrad, H. G. Wells, Arthur Ransome. Others may be lesser known but here are well remembered: Samuel Purchas, Sabine Baring-Gould, Margery Allingham, J. A. Baker. In ten chapters James Canton crosses five centuries into the furthest reaches of the county in search of writers and what can be seen of their work today. J. A. Baker follows the peregrines along the Chelmer valley to the Blackwater estuary at Maldon. John Clare wanders the hidden pathways of Epping Forest scribbling poetry while Arthur Ransome sails around the islands of the Hamford Waters. William Shakespeare appears in the woody glades beside Castle Hedingham, Joseph Conrad stares across the Essex marshes at Tilbury to the Thames, while Sabine Baring-Gould's Gothic heroine Mehalah lives upon a lone muddy stretch beside Mersea Island, where Margery Allingham sets her first tale of smuggling and murder; Daniel Defoe recounts the horror of the ague on the Dengie Peninsula; H. G. Wells writes a tale of the First World War from his home at Little Easton. Samuel Purchas tells such seafaring tales from his Southend vicarage as to inspire Samuel Taylor Coleridge to write Kubla Khan. Combining detailed literary detective work with personal responses to landscapes and their meanings, James Canton offers a fresh vision of Essex, its cultural history and its living legacy of wilderness and imagination.

The ninth volume of the Print Network series contains twelve chapters from scholars working on the connections between the parties involved in the production of print artefacts, from author to printer, publisher, bookseller and reader. Chronologically, the offerings range from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries as they track the developing trade in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Publishers and readers who spent part of their lives in North America are also featured in several of the chapters. The main theme emerging from this volume is the significance of cheap print, including newspapers and journals. The social, cultural political and economic significance of these artefacts is highlighted by an in-depth examination of the lives of those men and women who participated in the book trade.

‘Intensely alive to the landscape; its pasts, people and creatures’ Robert Macfarlane Take a journey into our ancient past. Explore a long-lost landscape and gradually discover the minds, beliefs and cultural practices of those souls who lived on these lands thousands of years before you.

As the Babri Masjid is razed in Ayodhya, brick by ancient brick, Ratan Oak stumbles upon a corpse at the Kipling House in Bombay. It is the beginning of an unraveling for him, of the submerged identity he has sought to suppress all his life: that of his great-grandfather, Ramratan Oak. Grappling with this tandem existence, Ratan realizes that the communal violence which consumes his city mirrors the turbulence it experienced in Ramratans times. For, concealed in the scientific discoveries of the plague epidemic of 1897 is the terrifying truth about the dead woman of Kipling House. A novel that perfectly balances character and pace, The Quarantine Papers dissects the compulsions of a hate that corrupts, as it trails a doomed love story from nineteenth century Bombay into our own day.

At first, Lily is afraid of the paper man whom she sees on the way home from school, but when winter comes and she sees that he has no warm clothes, she tells her mother and father that she has an idea.

It was an exercise to learn how to see, to understand just one thing in its greatest detail. Stephen Taylor came across the 250-year-old tree while on a walk in Essex, England, six years ago, shortly after the deaths of his mother and close friend a tragic time that brought him back to painting and then to an obsession with realism and color perception. He painted the same oak scores of times over a period of three years, in extremes of weather and light, at all times of day and night. Oak is nature's creed of endurance (the tree was standing when Jane Austen was just a baby) and of one man's promise to find beauty in a painful world.