MP3 Audios - Biography

Exactly one hundred years ago, a sensitive woman naturalist, nature lover,
and accomplished artist began to chronicle all that she encountered while walking and
cycling around the countryside of her native England and neighboring Scotland.

Besides noting the flora and fauna, she included poems and quaint folk sayings, saints' days,
mottoes, and tidbits of history. Follow along with her month by month as she chronicles the
summer thunderstorms and the first hard frost, notes Lady Day and Candlemas Day, watches
birds nesting and raising their young, and quotes Shakespeare's praise of the fickleness of April
and Browning's description of early November hours.

Known in its facsimile reproduction as The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady, Edith Holden's
Nature Notes of 1906 will take the listener back in time one hundred years to when a young
woman had the leisure time to deeply explore every nook of her countryside, sweetly celebrating the
progress of the seasons on every page of her diary.

Edith B. Holden (1871-1920) was born in Worcester, England. Her family lived in the small village of Olton, and it was there in 1906 that she wrote and illustrated her nature notes diary. Later she moved to London, where she met and married Ernest Smith, a sculptor. In March of 1920, Edith died tragically by drowning in the Thames River, while gathering buds from chestnut trees.

Vanessa Benjamin, a native of the British Isles, graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London. She has performed on stage, as a voice-over artist, and as an audiobook narrator. "I really love playing all the parts when I narrate a book. It's an adventure, a challenge, and above all I feel that I learn something new with each book I read."