"A Poacher's Life."

A selection of passages from Bates's 1935 novel The Poacher, published in an anthology hosting nature writing by twenty-seven authors, including Hardy, W.H. Hudson, Galsworthy, Conrad and lesser names, among them the editor Henry Williamson.

In his introduction, Williamson describes Bates as "probably the youngest of the contributors to this section. He has many gifts; he builds on a foundation of rock..."

It is not known whether Williamson or Bates edited the passages from the novel, which appear to have no textual changes but merely deletions of various sentences. The passages, comprising ten pages and roughly 2800 words, originally appeared in Part I, chapter 1, section 1 (I.1.1), I.1.3, I.3.3, II.1.1, and II.2.1 of the novel, and they depict the young Luke Bishop poaching both with his father and alone.

The anthology was sixth in a series of anthologies that also included prose, biography, drama, poetry, memoirs, travel, fiction, and animal writing.

In An Anthology of Modern Nature Writing, edited by Henry Williamson (London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1936).