Ring of Bright Water: A Trilogy - Softcover

An aristocrat, adventurer, naturalist, conservationist, secret agent, shark hunter, racing driver, painter and social renegade, Gavin Maxwell was born in 1914, the youngest son of an aristocratic Scottish family. During a trip to Iraq in 1956, he fell in love with his first otter. Moving to Scotland's West Coast, he set up home with his animals, and after its destruction by fire, he moved to a lighthouse cottage off the Isle of Skye. He died in 1969 at age 55. He wrote and illustrated many books, the most beloved being Ring of Bright Water, released as a film in 1969.

Gavin Maxwell was to otters what Joy Adamson was to lions, Dian Fossey to gorillas, Jane Goodall to chimpanzees and Grey Owl to beavers. Ring of Bright Water was one of the twentieth-century s most popular wildlife books (top of the U.S. bestseller lists for a year, over two million sold worldwide) and was habitually bracketed with Thoreau s Walden, Gilbert White s Natural History of Selborne and Henry Williamson's Tarka the Otter. --Douglas Botting, Gavin Maxwell: A Life

One of the outstanding wildlife books of all time. --New York Herald Tribune --New York Herald Tribune

One of the outstanding wildlife books of all time. --New York Herald Tribune

One of the outstanding wildlife books of all time. --New York Herald Tribune

Likely outside of assigned reading, in many ways, Gavin Maxwell is still the most quintessential of UK writers. Born in Scotland during the World War I, he is most remembered for making otters an appealing pet in his Ring of Bright Water trilogy. Based on Maxwell's ongoing adventures with a series of otters he took into his home over the years, Bright Water and its sequels, The Rocks Remain and Raven Seek Thy Brother, manage to combine all the humor of Gerald Durrell with the heartrending truth of James Herriot. Yes, otters are very cute, but also otters die, sometimes quite horrifically. (No, I'm not happy about that, but knowing it going in helps a lot.) What's interesting about Maxwell's stories is that his is not a picture of domestic bliss; the wild animals might be domesticated, but the wild remains. . . . For a picture of one man's very complicated life in mid century Britain, Maxwell is certainly a must read. There is something endlessly endearing about how hard he tried to live a life only he could imagine possible. Plus, it's just nice to know that otters truly are as charismatic as many of us had always hoped. Kudos to David R. Godine for bringing Maxwell's stories to a new generation in one volume that includes the author's sweet pencil drawings as well. --Bookslut