Within the english speaking countries, nature writing is for about forty years a well-known literary genre, during the last ten years it became quite popular in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Under the roof of this genre there can be found essays, novels and especially poetry - all of them quite different works but having in common that they deal with nature and try to come closer to nature through the process of writing. But there are also classic books that could be seen as pure nature writing. They are often old science books, written in the spirit of  the natural scientists of the 18. and 19.  century. These are not only descriptions of nature, but collections of everything the authors knew about floral, faunal or mineral phenomena, combined into a written form in which it is important for the writer (and the reader, too) to take clear sight, to feel and experience nature in a nowadays nearly impossible way. Nature writing has a deep contemplative, even meditative character.

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