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The story behind the rediscovery of John Crompton's nature books is almost (but not quite) as wonderfully quirky as the books themselves. A few years ago, novelist William Humphrey happened to mention Crompton's The Spider to a publisher friend named Nick Lyons. The Spider, out of print for decades, proved difficult to locate. But one day, idly browsing through the shelves at a used book shop, Nick Lyons' colleague William Burford came across another Crompton opus, called The Hunting Wasp. He bought it, and promptly fell under the spell of Crompton's colorfully laconic, decidedly anthropomorphic style. Apparently others had done so, too, because the tattered jacket was festooned with glowing quotes from the likes of John Betjemen, Elizabeth Bowen and Harold Nicolson.
But further investigation of Crompton only deepened his mystery. The English publisher whose imprint was on the spine of the book couldn't recall anything about him; the British Museum had no record of him either; and since the book was copyrighted under the name of J.B.C. Lamburn, it was possible that Crompton was entirely fictitious. Undeterred, the enthusiasts at...