1720-1793 · English clergyman and naturalist, author of The Natural History of Selborne
About Gilbert White
Gilbert White (1720-1793) was an English clergyman and naturalist, born in his grandfather's vicarage at Selborne in Hampshire and educated at Oriel College, Oxford, of which he remained a fellow. He spent most of his life as a curate in and near Selborne, living at his house, The Wakes, where he kept a garden, a weather diary and a naturalist's journal for over forty years. His one book, drawn from his letters, made him the founding figure of English field natural history.
“it is a matter of wonder to find that Providence should bestow such a profusion of days, such a seeming waste of longevity, on a reptile that appears to relish it so little as to squander more than two-thirds of its existence in a joyless stupor”
The Natural History of Selborne is a book of letters about one Hampshire parish, written by its curate over about twenty years to two learned correspondents: the zoologist Thomas Pennant and the lawyer and antiquary Daines Barrington. White opens with the place itself: its position among the chalk downs and sandy heaths of east Hampshire, its soils, springs and beech hanger, the deep hollow lanes worn into the rock, the forest of Wolmer and its decayed deer.