The Joy of Walking

Just like the best walks, The Joy of Walking takes you on a journey with lots to surprise and enjoy along the way. Through the best of classic writing, this inspiring anthology shows how the simple act of walking goes to the heart of life itself.Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning pocket size classics, this edition is edited and introduced by Suzy Cripps.Whether walking through awe-inspiring countryside or weaving your way through crowds in the hustle and bustle of great cities, we take thousands of steps a day. Finding meaning in movement can be difficult in today’s frenetic world. This may seem like a modern problem, but putting one foot in front of the other is something that authors have been writing about for centuries. Some like Gaskell, Wordsworth and Whitman extol the virtues of walking in the countryside, be it on one’s own connecting with nature or as the means to really good conversation with friends. Others like Dickens and E. M. Forster explore the thrill and dangers of moving about the city, by day or by night. In The Joy of Walking you’ll find a wealth of essays, poetry and fiction celebrating and exploring the joy of walking.

This anthology is edited by Suzy Cripps, a student of Creative Writing at Somerville College, University of Oxford, who also holds a degree in English Language & Literature from Mansfield College, Oxford. Selected writings by: Henry D Thoreau, Charlotte Bronte, Robert Louis Stevenson, E.M. Forster, Walt Whitman, John Burroughs, William Hazlitt, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Rabindranath Tagore, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Frederick Douglas, Thomas Traherne, Dorothy Wordsworth, Robert Southey, Ann Radcliffe, Fanny Burney, William Cowper, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Lennox, Jean Jacques Rousseau, William Wordsworth, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Elizabeth Gaskell, Mark Twain, C Morley, John Muir, Harriet Martineau, Leslie Stephen, Thomas Hardy, Emily Bronte, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire, A. E. Housman, Wilkie Collins, Jane Austen, W. B. Yeats, John Clare, John Keats, George Eliot, Rosa N Carey and John Dyer