Ring of Bright Water

Product Information

In den 50er Jahren beschließt Gavin Maxwell sich in ein verlassenes Haus an der schottischen Westküste zurückzuziehen.

I can’t have been more than an early teenager, as evidenced by the faint impression of algebra indented in the book’s front cover, which I must have leant on during homework. First Edition thus with frontispiece and 16 pages and coloured and monochrome plates; pictorial boards blue buckram back lettered in black and silver a fine copy in publisher's board slip-case. A haven for wildlife, he named his home Camusfearna and settled there with the otters Mij, Edal and Teko. So, in the end, Maxwell’s treatment of otters and other creatures was simply one aspect of the arrogant behavior of men who have been taught to see themselves as masters of our world and everything in it.Yet when Gavin Maxwell’s Ring of Bright Water took its title line from part two of Kathleen Raine’s poem ‘The Marriage of Psyche’–a work inspired by the Highland cottage they had once shared–it was merely the latest twist in a tortured, ‘some-requited’ love that would see a man attain worldwide literary acclaim while ‘the woman in his life’ [2] was either ignored completely or condemned as a lovesick witch. It was written by Richard Frere who, after working for Maxwell as a builder on the lighthouse properties, became Maxwell’s business manager. The otter wreaks havoc in his small apartment, and together they leave London for a rustic cottage overlooking the sea on the west coast of Scotland. H. Smith Award, three Honorary Doctorates, the French Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and many other prizes for her visionary work. Built within us all is the sense to empathise and understand nature because our intuition is a survival mechanism.

Two further volumes followed bringing the story full circle telling of the difficult last years and the final abandonment of the settlement. The story of how Maxwell brought Mijbil back to rise in his isolated home in Sandaig (named Camusfeàrna in the book) on the west coast of Scotland, is told in Ring of Bright Water (1960); the book sold more than two million copies and in 1969 was made into a film. The book begins with a beautiful depiction of the flora and fauna that reign supreme, of the nearby waterfall, lighthouse and burn that form part of this picturesque seascape along the rugged Atlantic coast of the West Highlands.I was nervous to read this book because I'm very sensitive to animal welfare and completely against animals in captivity. That tale leaves no trace of the woman who was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry, a CBE, the Cholmondely Prize for Literature, the W. Her relationship with Maxwell deteriorated after 1956 when she indirectly caused the death of Mijbil. He was three months old when his father was killed in a German artillery barrage in the First World War.