Landmarks / Robert Macfarlane.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

From Robert Macfarlane, the acclaimed author of The Old Ways and Underland --a celebration of the language of landscape and the power of words to shape our sense of place

For years now, the British writer Robert Macfarlane has been collecting place-words: terms for aspects of landscape, nature, and weather, drawn from dozens of languages and dialects of the British Isles. In this, his fifth book, Macfarlane brilliantly explores the linguistic and literary terrain of the British archipelago, from the Shetlands to Cornwall and from Cumbria to Suffolk, offering themed glossaries of hundreds of these rare, deeply local, poetical terms, organized by such geographical terrains as flatlands, uplands, waterlands, coastlands, woodlands, and underlands. Interspersed with this archive of place words are biographical essays in which Macfarlane writes of his favorite authors who have paid close attention to the natural world and who embody in their own work the huge richness of place language--from Barry Lopez and John Muir to Nan Shepard, J. A. Baker, and Roger Deakin. Landmarks is a book about the power of language and how it can become a way to know and love landscape, from a writer acclaimed for his own precision of utterance and distinctive, lyrical voice.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE 2015 SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE 2016

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• 1 The Word-Hoard (p. 1)
• 2 A Counter-Desecration Phrasebook (p. 15)
• Glossary I Flatlands (p. 37)
• 3 The Living Mountain (p. 55)
• Glossary II Uplands (p. 81)
• 4 The Woods and the Water (p. 95)
• Glossary III Waterlands (p. 117)
• 5 Hunting Life (p. 139)
• Glossary IV Coastlands (p. 163)
• 6 The Tunnel of Swords and Axes (p. 177)
• Glossary V Underlands (p. 195)
• 7 North-Minded (p. 209)
• Glossary VI Northlands (p. 221)
• 8 Bastard Countryside (p. 231)
• Glossary VII Edgelands (p. 249)
• 9 Stone-Books (p. 263)
• Glossary VIII Earthlands (p. 279)
• 10 The Black Locust and the Silver Pine (p. 289)
• Glossary IX Woodlands (p. 305)
• 11 Childish (p. 315)
• Glossary x Left 6 lank for future place-words and the reader's own terms (p. 329)
• Postscript (p. 333)
• Guide to the Glossaries (p. 337)
• Notes (p. 345)
• Select Bibliography (p. 369)
• Acknowledgements (p. 375)
• Index (p. 379)

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Robert Macfarlane is the author of Landmarks which made the Samuel Johnson Prize 2015 shortlist.

(Bowker Author Biography)