The story of my heart : my autobiography. By: Richard Jefferies, illustrated By: E. W. Waite: Edward Wilkins Waite RBA (14 April 1854 – 1924) was a prolific English landscape painter. Paperback – June 10, 2017

First off, this is a remarkable work. Jeffries not only sees the universe in a dew drop, his life experience is there also. From there he steps joyously into the unknown - but not the Unknowable. He refuses to be throttled by the Absolute, as Henry Miller says. The man had a vision that took him years amidst great suffering to articulate. Divesting himself of all cultural illusions he wrote not to save humanity but to enliven it.Now, about this edition. There is no doubt in my mind that someone borrowed, stole or bought this book from a library and did an amazingly bad job of copying it and throwing on another cover. The library stamps, even the due date slip, is still clearly visible. Some pages are in size 24 font, some are size 12. How on earth they got away with it beats me. The content is all there, though, and that's what counts. I recommend this book to everyone but not this bogus edition. That's the only reason this is 4 stars instead of 5.

I won't buy one of these again. No attention is given to where the text or chapters begin and end with regard to content. Some people will be able to tolerate this, but I found it very irritating. And the problem could be rectified with only a tiny bit of effort.

It is a 'product' but there is a better word -a book. I was interested in the prose style. It reminded me a bit of Samuel Beckett's novels which are ignored, and Dylan Thomas a bit.I have always been aware of RJ because I was am a huge fan of Henry Williamson who was a huge fan of RJ. But this was the first of his writings I have read.Although I am a mystic too I don't like the way he writes about his mysticism. It should be reading between the lines or jokes. Not rolled out relentlessly.

Emoting on nature and the cosmos... a very difficult thing to do well (walking in the hills causes a rush of hormone in him that sets off his writing). Jefferies almost pulls off a new religion. I disagree with him at page 44 (of the 66 total pages in this edition), but agree with his suspicion that there is much more at work. He is not of the Monotheistic tradition (tradition itself altogether disappoints him), but he seems still to believe in the divinity of man. Incredibly expressive; a must-read for that reason alone.

Mr. Jefferies is a very deep feeling person - very intense and aware of natural beauty. At times I have had some of those moments when out in nature but his experiences came often.

A hidden treasure I had wished I found decades ago. Thought provoking is too simplistic to what I found within these pages.

Way too flowery. It almost seems to be a nature study....not what I bargained for!

I love his writing and the clarity of his views on our world. And to think this was published in 1833. Would have enjoyed meeting and chatting with Mr. Jefferies

Once in a while you discover a book that grips you. You don't read it. You devour it. Every sentence seems to ring true. It vibrates with an energy beyond itself, lifting off the mere ink on paper. Such is The Story of My Heart. Richard Jefferies' seminal masterpiece is a work you either get or you don't. For many of us in the know it verges on life-changing. It expresses a bold reaching out for greater meaning that we have been yearning for. He sits well outside the box of conventional thinking, the traditional religious clichés that can make one feel choked, gasping for fresh air. Story of My Heart is that draft. Jefferies employs an arresting poetic prose style that has been praised. To me his phraseology rhymes with an attractive melodic cadence that makes it a joy to read, even before the nuances of meaning have been fully mined.The profundity of this concise book is only emphasised by knowledge that Jefferies died young, just four years after its publication. Its initial run in 1883 was a flop, barely completing half the proposed thousand-copy printing before the plug was pulled. People didn't get it - not yet. And not in Jefferies' lifetime. He died with the pain of disappointment that something he had crafted so earnestly from the depths of his soul was trodden under foot by puzzled indifference. The eccentric young man's finally gone off his rocker, they might have concluded.Jefferies had modest success as a journalistic nature reporter and had a sporadic stab at being a novelist. Story of My Heart reveals his true essence. It is billed as 'autobiography', but it isn't. It is surely unique in literature. A spiritual, mystical classic - for once not embedded in trite doctrines. He doesn't mention the G word, and yet for me the book is brim-full of something truly, authentically spiritual. It is pioneering. It bears the mark of a prophet. Given Post-Modern hindsight we might say he was a Victorian New Age Prophet way ahead of his time, startlingly so. He touches on themes that sound like Mindfulness and succinctly pre-empts Eckhart Tolle's celebrated millennial The Power of Now by over century.His style is personal and impassioned. For me there is something of the Pauline Epistle. Paul dictated his letters with inspirational spontaneity. There is a blind innocence of fervour in Paul, simply pouring out conviction stemming from his life-changing Near-Death Experience on the Road to Damascus. And Jefferies, with delightful young person's zeal, pours out his heart - hence the title - emanating from his personal, touching-on-visionary, experiences in seeking mystical understanding via intense communion with nature.It would be banal to conclude simply that Jefferies was a nature-lover. He uses the natural world and the cosmos as a springboard for reaching out towards Otherness, the Inexpressible and Ungraspable that lies somewhere beyond. In his desperate desire to go further in understanding and appreciating life's deeper meaning, at times you feel he is beginning to scratch at wonders ahead of his time… radio waves, the internet, dark matter, and quantum physics - particularly the modern suggestion that things might only exist when perceived. He is just a fingertip away. He can sense it.Amid the predominant tone of awe and wonder Jefferies presents one acutely angry polemic of a chapter (IX) in which he assertively disavows an intervening Higher Power. We might allow him this spike in the otherwise calm waters of the book, if we consider that he was emerging from successive surgery for an infirmity that would ultimately prove terminal. His philosophical invective surely stems from a personal place where he is raging against youthful debilitation and the potential spectre of early demise - when clearly, he has such a zest for life.The gift of this book is its enthusiasm for the search for authentic meaning that will not be satisfied by off-the-shelf platitudes. We need more, keep going. Perhaps he deserves to be recognised as a godfather of the New Age. Story of My Heart could be seen as a pioneering, Prophetic Epistle for the New Age.P.S. I had been puzzled by one of Jefferies’ working titles for TSOMH, Sun-Life. Having chanced across a You Tube talk by Rupert Sheldrake on the intriguingly bizarre question, Is the Sun Conscious? it all begins to make sense. The Sun illustrates Jefferies’ quest for that certain something ‘higher than deity’. It is a portal by which he seemed to express feelings of being connected with that something: ‘Of the sun I was conscious… the beautiful sky and sun; I felt them, they gave me inexpressible delight, as if they embraced and poured out their love upon me.’ (chap. V). And, ‘Beyond the heat and light, I felt the presence of the sun as I felt it in the solitary valley, the presence of the resistless forces of the universe; the sun burned in the sky as I stood and pondered… Go straight to the sun, the immense forces of the universe, to the Entity unknown; go higher than a god; deeper than prayer; and open a new day.’ (chap. VI).Footnote: This featured edition above is one of numerous republications since the 1883 original. Some include decent editorial introductions by various academics and writers. As a good study edition I would recommend Samuel J. Looker's 1947 Constable publication - available second-hand. Looker was the preeminent Jefferies-phile, having collected original handwritten manuscripts, and his volume includes an appendix first draft of TSOMH, as well as an authoritative intro', and detailed Jefferies chronology.

I'm sure the book is amazing..... if you have a high powered MICROSCOPE to read the impossibly tiny print!!! What a crushing shame that this book was reprinted so thoughtlessly and meanly. Would normal print size and a few more pages of paper really have broken the bank of AMAZON Fulfillment in Poland?

I was very disappointed after reading this book. There are two reasons why: one, I learned of a quote from the book over 20 years ago; I loved the quote - but upon reading the book I discovered that the quote had been somewhat constructed by others - not the author; he said something very different to what had been quoted. Two, apart from what I have just said I found the book lacking in structure, with no memorable, pithy but meaningful maxims for life, so to speak.

This is not a book for anyone wanting the details of the author's life. It is his recalled musings over many years about life, its purpose, progress and destination. A book for those who think there is more to life than we can see, and leans towards a great totality of which we are part rather than an external 'God'. A strange book, but strangely engrossing. His memorial stone in Wiltshire has these words which give you the flavour: 'It is eternity now. I am in the midst of it. It is about me in the sunshine.' Recommended.

This is a copy from a book - a photocopy and poorly put together with Chapter Headings turning up in the middle of pages - or even in the middle of lines of prose. The sentiment is sophorific before bed - but instead buy the proper edition with the beautiful painting plates in it - in fact I think the paintings are the best bit of this - they are truly magnetic.