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Hatfield's Herbal is the story of how people all over Britain have used its wild plants throughout history, for reasons magical, mystical and medicinal. Gabrielle Hatfield has drawn on a lifetime's knowledge to describe the properties of over 150 native plants, and the customs that surround them: from predicting the weather with seaweed to using deadly nightshade to make ladies' pupils dilate appealingly, and from ensuring a husband's faithfulness with butterbur to warding off witches by planting a rowan tree. Filled with stories, folklore and remedies both strange and practical, this is a memorable and eye-opening guide to the richness of Britain's heritage.
This totally new and much needed work on the County’s flora – published in association with the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust – is the first comprehensive study for nearly a century. Excluding the Isle of Wight, it contains over 1750 species of vascular plants including some non-indigenous speces as well as subspecies, varieties and hybrids. In addition, condensed accounts of the lichens (590 taxa) and bryophytes (459 taxa) – groups in which the county is particularly rich – have been contributed by Francis Rose with Ken Sandell and Alan Crundwell respectively. As in Townsend’s Flora of Hampshire (1884), there are introductory chapters on Structure and Geology; Climate; Habitats; and an up-to-date Comparison of Hampshire’s Flora with some other southern Counties (including the Isle of Wight) – all by Francis Rose. There are also chapters on Conservation of the Flora (with a complete list of nature reserves) by Peter Brough and Paul Bowman; Some earlier Workers on the Hampshire Flora by David Allen; and Botanical Recording by Paul Bowman. The Flora ends with an extensive Bibliography and References and a fully comprehensive Index. The principal authors are all experienced Hampshire botanists with an intimate knowledge of its flora.
Are there any legends about cats? Is Cinderella an English story? What is (or was) a Mumming Play? The subject of folklore covers an extremely wide field, with connections to virtually every aspect of life. It ranges from the bizarre to the seemingly mundane. Similarly, folklore is as much afeature of the modern technological age as the ancient world, of every part of the country, both urban and rural, and of every age group and occupation. Containing 2,000 entries, from dragons to Mother Goose, May Day to Michaelmas, this new reference work is an absorbing and entertaining guide to English folklore. Aimed at a broad general readership, the dictionary provides an authoritative reference source on such legendary characters as the Babesin the Wood, Jack the Giant Killer, and Robin Hood, and gives entertaining and informative explanations of a wide range of subjects in folklore, from nosebleeds and wishbones to cats and hot cross buns.
Perhaps the most significant development of the Georgian theater was its multiplication of ethnic, colonial, and provincial character types parading across the stage. In Theatrical Nation, Michael Ragussis opens up an archive of neglected plays and performances to examine how this flood of domestic and colonial others showcased England in general and London in particular as the center of an increasingly complex and culturally mixed nation and empire, and in this way illuminated the shifting identity of a newly configured Great Britain. In asking what kinds of ideological work these ethnic figures performed and what forms were invented to accomplish this work, Ragussis concentrates on the most popular of the "outlandish Englishmen," the stage Jew, Scot, and Irishman. Theatrical Nation understands these stage figures in the context of the government's controversial attempts to merge different ethnic and national groups through the 1707 Act of Union with Scotland, the Jewish Naturalization Bill of 1753, and the Act of Union with Ireland of 1800. Exploring the significant theatrical innovations that illuminate the central anxieties shared by playhouse and nation, Ragussis considers how ethnic identity was theatricalized, even as it moved from stage to print. By the early nineteenth century, Anglo-Irish and Scottish novelists attempted to deconstruct the theater's ethnic stereotypes while reimagining the theatricality of interactions between English and ethnic characters. An important shift took place as the novel's cross-ethnic love plot replaced the stage's caricatured male stereotypes with the beautiful ethnic heroine pursued by an English hero.
For centuries, investigations into the origins of words were entwined with investigations into the origins of humanity and the cosmos. With the development of modern etymological practice in the nineteenth century, however, many cherished etymologies were shown to be impossible, and the very idea of original 'true meaning' asserted in the etymology of 'etymology' declared a fallacy. Structural linguistics later held that the relationship between sound and meaning in language was 'arbitrary', or 'unmotivated', a truth that has survived with small modification until today. On the other hand, the relationship between sound and meaning has been a prime motivator of poems, at all times throughout history. The Life of Words studies a selection of poets inhabiting our 'Age of the Arbitrary', whose auditory-semantic sensibilities have additionally been motivated by a historical sense of the language, troubled as it may be by claims and counterclaims of 'fallacy' or 'true meaning'. Arguing that etymology activates peculiar kinds of epistemology in the modern poem, the book pays extended attention to poems by G. M. Hopkins, Anne Waldman, Ciaran Carson, and Anne Carson, and to the collected works of Geoffrey Hill, Paul Muldoon, Seamus Heaney, R. F. Langley, and J. H. Prynne.
The debt medicine owes to botany is not commonly appreciated. In the past, medicine relied almost entirely on plants, and even today, many western medicines are plant derived. Despite this, historians have largely neglected the study of domestic medicine, practised by the ordinary person and passed down through generations, in favour of 'official medicine'. The History of Domestic Plant Medicine brings together manuscripts, letters, diaries, personal oral interviews and other primary evidence to produce a detailed picture of the medicinal use of native plants in Britain from 1700 to the present day. Recording for posterity this neglected aspect of our heritage, it is a valuable contribution to the study of the folklore of modern Britain and a fascinating piece of social history.
The Poetics of Plants in Spanish American Literature examines the defining role of plants in cultural expression across Latin America, particularly in literature. From the colonial georgic to Pablo Neruda’s Canto general, Lesley Wylie’s close study of botanical imagery demonstrates the fundamental role of the natural world and the relationship between people and plants in the region. Plants are also central to literary forms originating in the Americas, such as the New World Baroque, described by Alejo Carpentier as “nacido de árboles.” The book establishes how vegetal imaginaries are key to Spanish American attempts to renovate European forms and traditions as well as to the reconfiguration of the relationship between humans and nonhumans. Such a reconfiguration, which persistently draws on indigenous animist ontologies to blur the boundaries between people and plants, anticipates much contemporary ecological thinking about our responsibility towards nonhuman nature and shows how environmental thinking by way of plants has a long history in Latin American literature.
“My Rebellious and Imperfect Eye”: Observing Geoffrey Grigson acknowledges and celebrates Geoffrey Grigson (1905-1985) as an all-round man, as a distinctive lyrical poet, as the exact observer of nature and of men, in the past and in the present, as a pioneering literary critic and art critic, as an unrivalled anthologist, as a ground-breaking editor, as a broadcaster, as a botanist - the list could be extended. In an unsurpassed number of diverse areas of artistic and natural culture, Grigson passionately communicated all he experienced and felt to as wide an audience as possible. Therefore, as the centenary of his birth comes in view, it seems singularly appropriate to celebrate Geoffrey Grigson's unique contribution to the twentieth-century cultural scene. In a writing career spanning nearly sixty years, he was unmatched by any of his contemporaries for a range which reaches from the edges of journalism into and beyond the academic world. In prose and verse, the nineteen contributors to this volume, amongst them some of the most distinguished names in contemporary English letters, would hardly claim to have covered every aspect of Grigson's genius, but they do manage to touch upon most of the territory he illuminated. The volume contains a full bibliography of Grigson's work and a number of his drawings.