Exmoor Microstudies
Between 1970 and 1990, the Exmoor Press (a company run privately by Exmoor Society Officers Victor Bonham-Carter and S.H. Burton) published twenty six microstudies on topics related to Exmoor.
As described by Victor Bonham-Carter below, these microstudies stepped in to fill a publication gap on topics related to Exmoor.
"What struck us was that, apart from the Review etc., there was very little contemporary writing of any value about Exmoor. Most of the good books belonged to the past, as we knew from the Bibliography. What we found in the shops was a plethora of ' Lorna Doonery', and that, we felt, did not reflect the real Exmoor at all. The field was wide open for serious but readable books on all the other aspects of Exmoor life - history, geology, wild life, the coast, human activities of every kind, and a decent guide book, etc . The region was rich in material which, if drawn on for publication, would provide a fascinating range of information wanted by hundreds, if not thousands, of people, whether they lived on Exmoor or not."
Over the next twenty years, Exmoor Press published twenty six microstudies, each around 60-100 pages with illustrations. They include studies of the wildlife and natural history of Exmoor, the history of key places and industries of Exmoor, and of writers associated with the area.
These are still today, as Hilary Binding wrote in an Exmoor Review 1993 article, “of lasting value to the student and lover of Exmoor”. They are in regular use in the Exmoor Society Archive by researchers and members of the public interested in Exmoor.
Five more microstudies were directly published by The Exmoor Society in the mid-2010s, as part of a project on the Understanding Exmoor Through The Use Of Archives. We continue to look for opportunities to produce more microstudies on different topics related to the history and nature of Exmoor.
All 31 microstudies are a valuable source of information for anyone interested in researching a topic related to Exmoor, and can be viewed by visiting our archive. Below you can see the different titles included in our collection.
Other microstudies available in our collection:
