Acquainted with the Night (book)
non-fiction work by Christopher Dewdney
Acquainted with the Night: Excursions through the World After Dark (or Acquainted with the Night: A Celebration of the Dark Hours) is a non-fiction book by Christopher Dewdney about various aspects of night. It was first published in 2004 by HarperCollins. It uses the same title as the Robert Frost poem "Acquainted with the Night". The book consists of 14 chapters, with one chapter dedicated to each hour of the night, from 6 pm to 5 am. Mini-essays populate each chapter which each follow a theme, like nocturnal creatures, dreams, astronomy, and mythology. Other subjects and topics touched upon include science, art, culture, natural history, superstitions, and psychology. The book was a finalist for the 2004 Governor General's Awards and for the 2005 Charles Taylor Prize. It tied with Dark Matter: Reading The Bones for the World Fantasy Award in Anthologies.
Background
At the time of Acquainted with the Night's writing, author and poet Christopher Dewdney was 52 years old and living in Toronto with his wife, Barbara Gowdy. He had previously written 14 books, the last being the 2002 book of poetry, The Natural History.
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This entry incorporates text from “Acquainted with the Night (book)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.