JEFFERIES, (John) Richard

(1848-1887)

   UK naturalist and novelist. The son of a farmer, he showed remarkable powers of observation when writing about Nature, describing it in a poetic style from an animist viewpoint that was devoid of sentimentality. This was particularly noticeable in his first fantasy novel, Wood Magic: A Fable (1881; cut vt Sir Bevis: A Tale of the Fields 1889); semi-autobiographical, it features a young boy who has the abilityto communicate with animals, birds and plants, and was primarily concerned with the social and political structure of the local animal kingdom and the struggles of a contender for the throne. A sequel, the famous Bevis: The Story of a Boy (1882), appeared a year later, but with the emphasis onthe pleasures and intrigues of childhood rather than the hero's supernatural abilities.For the last six years of his life RJ's health was severely in decline, and his thoughts turned to the future and to speculation. The result was After London, or Wild England (1885), a post- HOLOCAUST novel which describes, from the viewpoint of a future historian,an England reverted to rural wilderness: the novel's first part describes the lapse into barbarism, the specific reasons for the disaster being deliberately kept vague, and the second details the medieval-style society that has come into being and tells of a voyage of discovery on a great inland lake that now covers the centre of England. After London is a first-class example of Victorian sf and proved very popular at the time; its influence can be traced through W.H. HUDSON's A Crystal Age (1887) to John COLLIER's Tom's A-Cold (1933; vt Full Circle: A Tale US). RJ'searlier political SATIRE, Jack Brass: Emperor of England (1873), can loosely be construed as fantasy.

   JE

   See also: CITIES; HISTORY OF SF; PASTORAL; POLLUTION; UTOPIAS.