{"product_id":"9781625349682","title":"PRE-ORDER NOW Robert Francis : Collected Prose by Matthew James Babcock","description":"\u003cp\u003e \u003cstrong\u003e PRE-ORDER NOW - Published: 15\/12\/2026 \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eRediscovering the quietly radical writing of a poet who chose simplicity, solitude, and contemplation over modern haste\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAmerican author Robert Francis, whom Robert Frost called \"the best neglected poet,\" lived in Amherst, Massachusetts from the 1920s to the 1980s. As an underappreciated but prolific poet, Francis authored eight poetry collections and received a number of prestigious prizes. Still, like many poets committed to their craft, he lived most of his quiet life at or well below the poverty level. To sustain himself financially, Francis turned to essay writing in popular magazines, such as the \u003ci\u003eChristian Science Monitor\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eForum\u003c\/i\u003e. From 1938 to 1953, as America and the world experienced a period of intense modernization, he produced an invigorating, challenging, and enlightening quantity of prose whose quality should rank him alongside writers such as Emerson, Thoreau, Wendell Berry, and Annie Dillard.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003ePublished in one volume for the first time, \u003ci\u003eRobert Francis: Collected Prose\u003c\/i\u003e invites readers to a retrospective retreat into the solitude and serenity of Franciss cabin, Fort Juniper, where he ardently and artfully dueled the most psychologically, socially, and economically destructive aspects of industrialized America. These essays, together with selections from Franciss previously unpublished nature treatise, \u003ci\u003eTraveling in Concord\u003c\/i\u003e, offer an avenue toward an enhanced understanding of many commonly overlooked aspects of the natural world, offering 21st-century readers a refreshing reorientation of worldviews, advocating life principles of simplicity over unnecessary technological complexity, and conservation over consumerism. Vibrant, jubilant, at times sardonic and brooding but always absorbing, Franciss essays draw readers into the meditative mood of his woodland walks, apple harvests, and autumn landscapes to discover, as he writes, \"the importance of the unimportant, the virtue of the small, the rewards of intense cultivation.\"\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003eBinding: Hardback","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56998971212149,"sku":"9781625349682","price":79.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781625349682.jpg?v=1774536784","url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/products\/9781625349682","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}