Dr Sue Walsh will be giving a seminar at the Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) entitled ‘Wilderness, as a baptism of nature: Childhood and the Nature Fakers’ on 19th February 2013, from 4.30-6 pm.
Taking up late C19th and early C20th North American perceptions of a connection between childhood and wilderness this seminar will take stories and essays by writers like Ernest Thompson Seton, Charles G.D. Roberts and Jack London and discuss how the ‘Nature Faker’ controversy that surrounded their depiction of animals and wild places also illustrates very particular ideas of childhood.