Join Our Next Book Club Read!
Book Club | July - September 2026 | LAUNCH
I think this book might have been what got me truly interested in the mythology of Britain.
Having picked up another of Amy Jeffs’ books, Wild, upon its publication in 2022, I was still working as a teacher and desperately keen to leave my sensible career. I’d begun a masters in History at Cambridge University, part-time, and the confluence of history and nature in Wild appealed to me deeply (I was also a country girl trapped in London…), offering bedtime reading that would enable me to escape what felt like a very humdrum, mid-pandemic life.
I snapped up Storyland, which had been published the previous year, upon finishing Wild, and you can bet that I had Saints on preorder when it was released in 2024.
Will you join our group read?
If you are interested in the history and mythology of early Britain, particularly if you find the expansive corpus of material a little overwhelming and unwieldy, then this might just be the book for you.
As we read Storyland over the next three months, Amy Jeffs’ expert hand will guide us carefully through multiple millennia of storytelling, drawing us in through her masterful words and beautiful, original, linocut drawings. We’ll explore how all this relates to the history of early medieval Britain, our focus here at Medieval Musings, covering individual themes each month in our essays, reading lists, and discussions.
Previous Medieval Musings Book Clubs
The Dark Queens, by Shelley Puhak [non-fiction]
Dark Earth, by Rebecca Stott [fiction]
Lost Realms, by Thomas Williams [non-fiction]
Hild, by Nicola Griffith [fiction]
‘Reading Storyland feels like listening to a bard orate mystical stories of the world that was. Erudite and lyrical, Jeffs takes readers by the hand and encourages us to join her as she guides us through the mystical landscape that is indelibly woven into the fabric of our everyday lives.’
BBC History Magazine (Book of the Year)
Here’s what the blurb of the book has to say:
Soaked in mist and old magic, Storyland is a new illustrated mythology of Britain, set in its wildest landscapes.
It begins between the Creation and Noah’s Flood, follows the footsteps of the earliest generation of giants from an age when the children of Cain and the progeny of fallen angels walked the earth, to the founding of Britain, England, Wales and Scotland, the birth of Christ, the wars between Britons, Saxons and Vikings, and closes with the arrival of the Normans.
These are retellings of medieval tales of legend, landscape and the yearning to belong, inhabited with characters now half-remembered. Told with narrative flair, embellished in stunning artworks and glossed with a rich and erudite commentary.
We visit beautiful, sacred places that include prehistoric monuments like Stonehenge, mountains such as Snowdon and rivers including the story-silted Thames in a vivid collection of tales of a land steeped in myth.
‘I have fallen so completely in love with this book; Storyland by Amy Jeffs, just one of the finest, most covetable things around. It’s a mythology of Britain; Brutus, Arthur, Scotus, Bladud, a mix of new telling and ancient, with original woodcuts by the author which are so beautiful you want to eat them. The stories are about strangeness and wonder and brutality, story of Britain from the top of Orkney to the bottom of Cornwall. It’s hugely original, and starkly lovely: I’ve never come across anything quite like it.’
Katherine Rundell
How will the Book Club work?
We will read Storyland on a schedule across the months of July to September 2026, shared behind the paywall of this post, though do feel free to read on through the book if you find yourself captivated.
Each month, readers will receive:
a brief post in the first week reminding us all of the chapters to read that month, the theme to be mindful of, and selected readings for additional study.
an in-depth post devoted to Storyland, which will contain: a themed essay; discussion questions; a reader response section for you to share your thoughts; and an edited list of additional readings related to the next month’s section.
I am also offering a self-study/pre-reading list behind the paywall of this post, for those who want to go deeper. This is a mixture of primary and secondary source material of a more academic flavour, which will help readers to grasp better the references of the book. By no means do you need to engage with this in order to understand the book; it is simply an additional offering for those who want to explore the history further.
Ready to join us?
Behind the paywall (as the Book Club is a paid subscriber exclusive), I’ll be sharing the reading schedule and self-study/pre-reading list, so that those who want to join us can get started on sourcing a copy and reading, ahead of the first in-depth post on Saturday 25th July.
