Robert Macfarlane, the wild places (2007)

Robert Macfarlane is the most prominent writer associated with what is commonly known as “the new nature writing.” This chapter frames the new nature writing as a subset of travel writing, thus identifying Macfarlane as one of the most significant British travel writers to emerge since the start of the twenty-first century. The chapter considers the background and cultural context of the new nature writing, and surveys the emerging scholarship around it. It then moves on to a close reading of Macfarlane’s influential second book, The Wild Places (2007), paying particular attention to issues of gender and masculinity, travellee representation, the construction of difference, and intertextuality (with a particular focus on maps as intertexts). This analysis reveals marked continuities with patterns identified by scholars in earlier travel writing, suggesting that Macfarlane is working in the genre’s core and conservative tradition, despite the notionally “new” and “domestic” focus of his work.