Great story of a boy exploring his local countryside, imposing his own mythology on it. Not brilliant on class and gender, as I recall.

Marvelous (but also disturbing) book from the 1800’s- others have described it as something like Tom Sawyer or Lord of the Flies and I heartily agree. It also reminded me a lot of Ernest Thompson Seton’s Two Little Savages. Bevis is the son of a landowner in rural England- and he pretty much runs around doing whatever he pleases. When the story opens, it drives straight into his efforts to build a raft out of odds and ends- I was baffled for a few pages wondering who this kid was, where he lived, what the heck he was doing, but then caught up in his unwavering intent to find items that would work to make what he wanted- because I’m a bit like that myself, when building something or other for the garden. After making the raft he goes on to rig a little (and very awkward it sounds) sailboat, he and his friend carve a boomerang, make a matchlock gun (!!), practice with bows and arrows, shoot targets with their various weapons, learn how to swim, roam around hunting rabbits and birds with their dog, stage a battle with a bunch of other boys- taking sides and planning strategies the whole nine yards, and so on and on and on.

The part I remember best is middle to the end, where Bevis and his friend Mark build a camp on an island in a lake near home, lie to their parents that they’re at someone else’s house for a visit, and live rough for a week or so. They fish, hunt small game, make pitiful attempts at cooking over a fire (with supplies filched from home like flour, potatoes, matches etc), construct a sundial, track animals pretending everything is exotic- the other kids trying to find their secret place are ‘savages’, the rabbits are ‘kangaroos’ the wood doves are ‘parrots’ you get the idea. They have to solve a little mystery of what is coming into their camp when they’re away stealing food, and another about what animal makes a wave just under the water’s surface (I thought it would be the otter but it was a type of diving bird). I was very sad when they shot the otter. It really is a story from a different time- the kids live in casual abundance- the pages are swarming with beautiful descriptions of nature, lush plant growth, myraid small wild things- which the boys delight in tracking, chasing and killing. They shoot birds for their feathers with no remorse, and are really proud of the otter skin. When they finally go home everyone praises their accomplishments and the father teaches them how to improve their shooting skills (this went on for way too many pages in my opinion). I was rather fascinated by the descriptions of sailing, though. Amazed at how ingenious the kids were at making things from observation and experiment alone. Appalled at how often they beat and kicked their dog to make it behave, and how they ignored the abject poverty the workmen’s children lived in, right alongside them on the farm but their suffering unseen.

It’s lively, full of adventure, boy’s squabbles and petty cruelties, and the richness of nature. I found it a compelling read, even though some things bothered me.

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Worth reading for chapter 35 alone: the most wonderful, luminous description of the night sky, which includes this: "When the few leaves left on this young oak were brown, and rustled in the frosty night, the massy shoulder of Orion came heaving up through it -- first one bright star, then another; then the gleaming girdle, and the less definite scabbard; then the great constellation stretched across the east. At the first sight of Orion's shoulder Bevis always felt suddenly stronger, as if a breath of the mighty hunter had come down and entered into him".
However, hunting was the problem with this book. The boys' resourcefulness in making things from scratch, the nature descriptions and the spacious sense of freedom and the outdoors, all make this book special. But I sickened at the casual slaughter of wildlife: anything at all that moved was literally fair game. Pike, a thrush, an otter, hares, herons, all destroyed for nothing; they didn't eat all they shot. Worse still, we haven't really moved on from this mindset, have we? As for females and "natives"; I pity them when Bevis is fully grown! Poor Pan the spaniel is casually beaten, too; nasty.
Then I recently came across "Wood Magic", which deals with Bevis's young childhood. It should really be called "Wood Horror". Bevis here is a really nasty-tempered little devil, always losing it and often hurting or killing something innocent as a result. Jefferies himself reveals fully his sadistic streak here, revelling in descriptions of a hawk slowly and painfully dying in a snare, a weasel caught in a trap. Poor Pan gets treated cruelly even by the people who should love and care for him as their dog. I certainly won't be keeping this one.