Explore Countryside Flora and Fauna with This Classic Naturalist
Every single page of Edith Holden's The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady is a celebration of beauty. Richly illustrated and hand lettered, this 1906 journal was never intended for publication, but rather to record Holden's thoughts and observations as she watched the seasons come to pass in the English countryside. Her mastery shines in this deceptively simple yet elegant look at the birds, plants, and insects of her local environs, along with favorite poems and her own notes.
Edith Holden was an art teacher and became well known as a children's book illustrator. Her paintings were shown in prestigious galleries including England's Royal Academy of Arts.
Though widely regarded as a talented artist, the diary she kept over the course of a year was shared with no one during her lifetime. It was first published some seventy years after she meticulously recorded this intimate view of a year in Warwickshire and soon became an international bestseller. It is the perfect companion for naturalists and anyone wishing to surround themselves with the sights and sense of the great out of doors.
This book is also available from Echo Point Books in hardcover (ISBN 164837011X).

Edith Holden was born at Kings Norton, Worcester, in 1871, one of seven children of a Midlands paint manufacturer. The family lived in the small village of Olton in Warwickshire, and it was there that she wrote and illustrated this book. After attending art school, she worked as an illustrator, with her drawings (often of animals) being published in several books.She later moved to London and in 1911 met and married Ernest Smith, a sculptor; they lived in Chelsea and had no children. On March 16,1920, in her forty-ninth year, Edith died tragically by drowning in the Thames, while gathering buds from chestnut trees.