Synopsis
<p>A Natural History of Nature Writing is a penetrating overview of the origins and development of a uniquely American literature. Essayist and poet Frank Stewart describes in rich and compelling prose the lives and works of the most prominent American nature writers of the19th and 20th centuries, including: <ul> <li>Henry D. Thoreau, the father of American nature writers. <li>John Burroughs, a schoolteacher and failed businessman who found his calling as a writer and elevated the nature essay to a loved and respected literary form. <li>John Muir, founder of Sierra Club, who celebrated the wilderness of the Far West as few before him had. <li>Aldo Leopold, a Forest Service employee and scholar who extended our moral responsibility to include all animals and plants. <li>Rachel Carson, a scientist who raised the consciousness of the nation by revealing the catastrophic effects of human intervention on the Earth's living systems. <li>Edward Abbey, an outspoken activist who charted the boundaries of ecological responsibility and pushed these boundaries to political extremes.</ul> Stewart highlights the controversies ignited by the powerful and eloquent prose of these and other writers with their expansive – and often strongly political – points of view. Combining a deeply-felt sense of wonder at the beauty surrounding us with a rare ability to capture and explain the meaning of that beauty, nature writers have had a profound effect on American culture and politics. A Natural History of Nature Writing is an insightful examination of an important body of American literature.<p>Frank Stewart is professor of English at the University of Hawaii. He is the author of three books of poetry, and editor of five anthologies, including A WORLD BETWEEN WAVES (Island Press/Shearwater, 1992).
Publishers Weekly
The task at hand in this well-documented, well-written volume is no less arduous than Henry David Thoreau's hopes for his extended stay at Walden Pond. Essayist and poet Stewart has attempted to capture the mystery as well as the history of nature writing. Without transgressing biographical or historical certainties, Stewart has created full-bodied characters in his interwoven portraits of the genre's most important practitioners. In doing so, the reader approaches an empirical understanding of that ephemeral ``in-betweenness'' with nature that is often left behind when reading the work of such disparate figures as Gilbert White, John Muir or Edward Abbey. Abbey's anarchic activism may have given him a cult following among renegade naturalists, but it is Thoreau to whom Stewart repeatedly returns for his historical understanding of the genre's ceaseless appeal. ``They make us aware of a kind of knowing that is potential in us but that we are apt to ignore or suppress, as though asleep,'' Stewart writes of his subjects and their work. Rigorous research and engaging prose make this study a useful secondary text for the academic and the general nature enthusiast alike. The book's extensive bibliography of further readings points the interested reader down any number of new paths. (Nov.)