Verdant with illustrations, a meditation upon the rootedness of trees in Wordsworth’s writing and beyond.   This is the first book to address William Wordsworth’s profound identification of the spirit of nature in trees. It looks at what trees meant to him, and how he represented them in his poetry and prose: the symbolic charm of blasted trees, a hawthorn at the heart of Irish folk belief, great oaks that embodied naval strength, yews that tell us about both longevity and the brevity of human life. Linking poetry and literary history with ecology, Versed in Living Nature explores intricate patterns of personal and local connections that enabled trees—as living things, cultural topics, horticultural objects, and even commodities—to be imagined, theorized, discussed, and exchanged. In this book, the literary past becomes the urgent present. "This book is a mine of information about trees, their origins, the growth of their cultural meanings. It also brings unexpected details into focus, transforming familiar poems into something new . . . Serious thoughts on the politics of tree-planting may be the best legacy of Peter Dale and Brandon C. Yen’s splendid book. ― Times Literary Supplement "Extremely wide-ranging, the book describes not only the trees that Wordsworth planted, wrote poems about, or fought to save, but also those he observed on his travels . . . This is a very stimulating book, at once scholarly and very readable, full of fascinating information and insights." ― Hortus “This book makes a major contribution to our understandings of the social and cultural history of trees and their deep importance for Wordsworth.” -- Charles Watkins, professor of rural geography, University of Nottingham Peter Dale lives in Essex, United Kingdom. A longstanding contributor to Hortus , he has written extensively on literature, music, and gardens, and his previous books include The Irish Garden: A Cultural History and, with Brandon C. Yen, Versed in Living Nature: Wordsworth’s Trees , the latter also published by Reaktion Books. Brandon C. Yen divides his time between the United Kingdom and Taiwan. He is the author of “The Excursion” and Wordsworth’s Iconography .