Initially, one of the most initially terrifying components of my degree at Oxford was the prospect of working with John Carey -- the legendary Merton Chair of English who translated Milton's
De Doctrina Christiana and wrote books on John Donne and many others. Fortunately this was only terrifying until our first meeting, where I found him warm and helpful -- if a little bemused by the ragged and jet-lagged Okie who had wandered into his office. He eventually became my thesis supervisor, and for years now I've enjoyed the chance to catch up with him on return trips to England, where I hear about the next book he will publish (forthcoming fall 2013: a memoir). He has always been a model of academic engagement that is never narrow, that always pushes past the little bubble that always threatens to engulf your life when you find yourself writing about seventeenth-century hermeticism or the Socinian heresy.
But until this summer, I've never had a chance to visit his home from home, the cottage in the Cotswolds where he maintains a fantastic garden and keeps bees. And so, until this summer, I didn't know of his fantastic double life as a purveyor of fine foods!
If you look closely at the label of that "Cotswold Honey," you'll see it's produced by author of John Donne: Life, Mind, and Art, and William Golding: The Man Who Wrote the Lord of the Flies. John tells me he produces around 200 pounds of honey in a good year, and his garden is truly a thing to behold -- far from the weedy, Darwinian survival of the fittest that goes on in my plot.
Eat your heart out, Harold Bloom!
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