Spring: A Folio Anthology

Fleeting but full of emerging life, spring brings the promise of sunny days and the sweeping away of winter blues. More delicate than summer and yet equally intense, it has moved many writers to words of praise. This generously illustrated collection of poetry and prose is by turns affectionate, humorous and elegiac, with work by George Orwell, Rachel Carson, Captain Scott and more. In a passage from The Wind in the Willows, Mole spring-cleans his house before scrambling above ground to roll in 'the warm grass of a great meadow'. Anton Chekhov is in awe of the River Goltva's 'rampant spring waters' and a world 'lit by stars, bestrewing every corner of the sky'. Coleridge writes of birds rejoicing, their song no longer subdued by winter, while his friend Wordsworth meditates on the passage of time in his famous 'Ode: Intimations of Immortality'. These extracts and many more are decorated with gorgeous colour illustrations by Petra Börner, the Swedish-born artist whose work appears across our seasonal anthologies. As well as two lush colour spreads, there are charming tailpieces depicting flora and fauna. Börner also created the book’s elegant binding design. Writer and broadcaster Paul Evans provides a thoughtful preface. He remembers marvelling at a manuscript of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, illuminated with stems and leaves. Nature’s power to inspire is all the more poignant, he says, when we note that a manmade ‘facsimile’ threatens increasingly to take its place. These timeless extracts, celebrating the earth’s natural rhythms, are ‘literary narcotic jolts of Spring to last us until the next’.