Henry Williamson
Henry Williamson was an English author best known for his works that explore the relationship between nature and the human experience. Born into a family with a long-standing connection to Bedfordshire, his early life was marked by solitude and an appreciation for the writings of Richard Jefferies, which inspired his later literary pursuits. Williamson's experiences as a soldier in World War I profoundly affected him; he returned home with physical and emotional scars, struggling to adapt to civilian life.
Initially, he tried his hand at journalism but faced significant challenges that pushed him to seek solace in rural living. Eventually settling in Devonshire, he found contentment and began to thrive as a writer. His most famous work, *Tarka the Otter*, published in 1927, garnered critical acclaim and solidified his reputation as a significant nature writer, alongside major works like *Salar the Salmon* and *The Phasian Bird*.
Williamson's writing is characterized by its deep insight into the lives of wild creatures and a poignant reflection on the fragility of life. He later returned to themes of war and its implications in his series *The Flax of Dreams* and *A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight*, which spans fifteen novels and offers a more optimistic perspective. Despite limited availability of his works in the United States, Williamson is celebrated for his unique contributions to literature, particularly in the realm of nature writing.
On this Page
Subject Terms
Henry Williamson
English novelist
- Born: December 1, 1895
- Birthplace: Brockley, near Lewisham, England
- Died: August 13, 1977
- Place of death: London, England
Biography
Henry Williamson’s lonely childhood was spent in a Bedfordshire house that had belonged to his family for more than four centuries. During his formative years he read and admired the writings of Richard Jefferies, who thus provided the inspiration for his later work. When World War I began Williamson enlisted; he was then nineteen. He served throughout the war in Flanders, where some of the bitterest fighting occurred and casualties were appalling. He returned to civilian life with gray hair and shattered nerves in 1920. Completely unable to cope with the hectic pettiness of the life around him, he attempted to earn a living as a reporter for the Weekly Dispatch, but he was forced to give up the position. He then tried to eke out an existence on his pension, which provided the meager income of forty pounds a year; this was supplemented by small sums received for nature articles that he contributed weekly to the Daily Express. He slept in haystacks in the nearby countryside or under trees on the Thames embankment. He was depressed and morbid, and he contemplated suicide. He had almost reached the end of his tether when he decided to abandon his impossible urban existence. He walked to Devonshire and settled down in a cottage at Exmoor to complete his first novel. As time passed, he found it possible to earn a living with his pen, and he found contentment in his rural surroundings. His work was admired by such famous writers as Walter de la Mare, Arnold Bennett, Thomas Hardy, and T. E. Lawrence. His nature novel Tarka the Otter won the Hawthornden Prize in 1927 and brought him widespread recognition; it has remained a modern nature classic. Two of his later books, Salar the Salmon and The Phasian Bird, the story of a pheasant, are considered equally significant.
Although Williamson was a prolific and successful writer, much of his work has not been issued in the United States. Nevertheless, he is widely regarded as one of the most gifted of nature writers; his novels reveal the lives of wild creatures from their own viewpoints, as evoked by a mind of deep insight and understanding. His somber prose transmits, faithfully, the eternal struggle of living things to survive and with it a deep awareness of the transitory fragility of life.
In his later years, he returned to the themes of his first series of novels, known collectively as The Flax of Dreams, which concerns an idealistic young officer who seeks to understand the causes of war. In A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight, a vast, autobiographical series of fifteen novels, he updates his themes into the 1950’s and reaches a happier conclusion. His accounts of rural life in Devon and Norfolk have also retained some of their popularity.
Bibliography
Caron, Sue. A Glimpse of the Ancient Sunlight: Memories of Williamson. Wirral, England: Aylesford, 1986.
Cook, Don. “The Great War and Its Effect on Henry Williamson.” Contemporary Review 244 (June, 1984).
Farson, Daniel. Henry Williamson: A Portrait. London: Robinson, 1986.
Fullager, Brian. “Henry Williamson and the Battle of the Somme.” T. E. Lawrence Newsletter 2, no. 9 (November, 1991).
Lamplugh, Lois. The Shadowed Man: Williamson, 1895-1977. Swimbridge, Devon, England: Wellspring, 1990.
Williamson, Anne. Henry Williamson: Tarka and the Last Romantic. Stroud, Gloucestershire, England: Alan Sutton, 1995.
Williamson, Anne. A Patriot’s Progress: Henry Williamson and the First World War. Stroud, Gloucestershire, England: Sutton, 1998.