The Story of My Heart

The Story of My Heart is a book first published in 1883 by English nature writer, essayist, and journalist Richard Jefferies. The book has been described as a “spiritual autobiography” where Jefferies idealises the English countryside as a sort of utopia. The book and its themes have been compared to the transcendentalist movement. Other Transcendentalist themes concerning rapturous union with Nature can be found in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Thoreau, and John Muir. The scholar Roger Ebbatson considers that the book’s “speculative” spiritualism is emblematic of the decline of Christian belief in the more empirical Victorian era.

John Richard Jefferies (6 November 1848 – 14 August 1887) was an English nature writer, noted for his depiction of English rural life in essays, books of natural history, and novels. His childhood on a small Wiltshire farm had a great influence on him and provides the background to all his major works of fiction.