Böcker av Ann Taylor

First Published in 1992, Choosing Our Future presents a personal but highly rigorous account of the environmental problems facing us and of the ways in which they can be tackled. Lucid and topical, this book will appeal to anyone who is interested in realistic solutions to environmental problems.

This collection explores many subjects that demand looking after - family, artistic achievements including literature, the natural world, memories, history, and others that call for tending to. It also focuses on the complexities of this engagement - when easy, when difficult, when the subjects are shaded by emotion or the effects of time. Then too there is the looking after, as in afterwards, the reflection on things gone by. These poems cover a broad range - small personal experiences to the grander occasions of life, and the memories of life. They explore the multi-faceted subject of alert custodianship - the necessity of paying daily attention, while at the same time tending to the past already lived.

The author's experiences as reader, teacher, mother, traveler, and especially, amateur birdwatcher. She covers such subjects as raising children to appreciate the natural world, watching birds in Kenya, reading natural historian, John Burroughs, and mistaking a fake owl for a real one near her own school campus-- "a book that will appeal to bird watchers, watchers of nature in general, lovers of literature, and those who appreciate a well-crafted essay" (Booklist); "a refreshing book, a wonderful tonic..." (Birdwatcher's Digest); "a comfortable, refreshing approach to observing birds" (Publishers's Weekly); "a wonderful collection...beautifully written" (Living Bird).

Displaying her intellectual and literary abilities from a young age, 'Mrs Taylor of Ongar' (1757-1830) enjoyed writing all her life. She had eleven children, of whom six (four of them writers) survived to adulthood. Her published works began with advice books for her own daughters, produced when increasing deafness made ordinary conversation difficult for her. This book, published in 1818, follows her earlier works for young women with a guide to conduct and 'reciprocal duties' within the family. Stern warnings and cautionary tales are given to show the importance of duty to and respect for parents by children, but the parental duties of care in rearing and especially in education are emphasised. Early discipline, lovingly applied, is seen as the key to successful parenting, and its absence is deemed disastrous. Like Ann Taylor's Practical Hints to Young Females (also reissued in this series), the book offers fascinating insights into the middle-class ideal of domestic happiness.

Displaying her intellectual and literary abilities from a young age, 'Mrs Taylor of Ongar' (1757-1830) enjoyed writing all her life. She had eleven children, of whom six (four of them writers) survived to adulthood. Her published works began with advice books for her own daughters, produced when increasing deafness made ordinary conversation difficult for her. Given the difficulty of providing advice equally appropriate to girls at all levels of society, this 1815 work is addressed to 'females in the middle ranks'. It is assumed that a girl's aspiration, as well as her destiny, is to be a wife and mother: conduct towards the husband, and the rearing of children, are of prime importance. But there is also a chapter for the husband, pointing out his reciprocal duties to his wife as an equal partner in their relationship. The book offers fascinating insights into the middle-class ideal of domestic happiness.