Cultural landscapes: Gilbert White and the natural history of Selbourne
In the exhibition of National Trust garden drawings and designs at present touring the United States is a marvellous watercolour by Samuel Hieronymous Grimm, which shows Henry White (brother of Gilbert) dressed as a hermit standing before the conically roofed hermitage at Selbourne. The image was engraved as an oval vignette to face the title page of the first edition of The Natural History and Antiquities of Selbourne. The bicentennial of that publication fell in 1989 and was celebrated by an exhibition at Stanford University and by this pamphlet (it is called a "keepsake"), which, besides listing the various items chosen in the exhibition to provide an intricate cultural framework for White's Selbourne, contains two essays by English literary scholars.