Tarka the Otter

Henry Williamson

may 2020 · New York Review of Books

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A classic of nature writing beloved by Rachel Carson, Ted Hughes, and Thomas Hardy.

Tarka the Otter is one of the defining masterpieces of modern nature writing, a model for books like J. A. Baker’s The Peregrine that seek to transcend the boundaries between the human and the animal worlds. Henry Williamson’s tale of the struggle for survival draws on his years of observing otters in the wild. It is also thought to reflect his traumatic experiences in the First World War.

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Henry Williamson (1895-1977) was born in Brockley, London, in 1895. During the First World War he served at the front as an infantryman and later as a transport officer. In 1921 he left London for rural north Devon, where, apart from a period as a farmer in Norfolk from 1937 to 1946, he lived and worked as a writer for the rest of his life. Tarka the Otter, his seventh book, was awarded the Hawthornden Prize in 1928. He published some fifty books in all, among them The Patriot's Progress, Salar the Salmon, and a fifteen-volume semi-autobiographical novel cycle, A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight. He contributed numerous articles to newspapers and periodicals and broadcast regularly on BBC radio. He was married twice and had eight children.

Charles Tunnicliffe (1901–1979) attended London’s Royal College of Art, where he graduated with distinction from the Etching and Engraving School. In addition to Tarka the Otter, Tunnicliffe illustrated seven other books by Henry Williamson, as well as hundreds of books, magazine articles, nature guides, and postcards. In 1978 he was awarded an Order of the British Empire.

Verlyn Klinkenborg is the author of Timothy; Or, Notes of an Abject Reptile and Several Short Sentences About Writing, among other books. He lives in Columbia County, New York, and teaches creative writing at Yale University.