A Natural History of Nature Writing

A Natural History of Nature Writing PDF Author: Frank Stewart
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1610912470
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book

Book Description
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: Henry D. Thoreau, the father of American nature writing. 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. John Muir, founder of Sierra Club, who celebrated the wilderness of the Far West as few before him had. Aldo Leopold, a Forest Service employee and scholar who extended our moral responsibility to include all animals and plants. 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. Edward Abbey, an outspoken activist who charted the boundaries of ecological responsibility and pushed these boundaries to political extremes. 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.

A Natural History of Nature Writing

A Natural History of Nature Writing PDF Author: Frank Stewart
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1610912470
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book

Book Description
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: Henry D. Thoreau, the father of American nature writing. 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. John Muir, founder of Sierra Club, who celebrated the wilderness of the Far West as few before him had. Aldo Leopold, a Forest Service employee and scholar who extended our moral responsibility to include all animals and plants. 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. Edward Abbey, an outspoken activist who charted the boundaries of ecological responsibility and pushed these boundaries to political extremes. 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.

A Natural History of Nature Writing

A Natural History of Nature Writing PDF Author: Frank Stewart
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 310

Get Book

Book Description
In Western society we feel neither entirely at one with our fellow creatures, nor entirely separate. Over the years, nature writers have struggled, in memorable language, with this feeling of "in-betweeness". A Natural History of Nature Writing shows us how this genre combines the rigors of science with the beauty of art to make our minds and our hearts whole. The book offers a penetrating overview of the origins and development of this 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 the 19th and 20th centuries.

Findings

Findings PDF Author: Kathleen Jamie
Publisher: Sort of Books
ISBN: 1908745096
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 148

Get Book

Book Description
It's surprising what you can find by simply stepping out to look. Award-winning poet Kathleen Jamie has an eye and an ease with the nature and landscapes of Scotland as well as an incisive sense of our domestic realities. In Findings she draws together these themes to describe travels like no other contemporary writer. Whether she is following the call of a peregrine in the hills above her home in Fife, sailing into a dark winter solstice on the Orkney islands, or pacing around the carcass of a whale on a rain-swept Hebridean beach, she creates a subtle and modern narrative, peculiarly alive to her connections and surroundings.

Nature Writing

Nature Writing PDF Author: Don Scheese
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134980779
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Get Book

Book Description
In this comprehensive study of the genre, Don Scheese traces its evolution from the pastoralism evident in the natural history observations of Aristotle and the poetry of Virgil to current American writers. He documents the emergence of the modern form of nature writing as a reaction to industrialization. Scheese's personal observations of natural settings sharpen the reader's understanding of the dynamics between author and locale. His study is further informed by ample use of illustrations and close readings core writers such as Thoreau, John Muir, and Mary Austin showing how each writer's work exemplifies the pastoral tradition and celebrate a spirit of place in the United States.

Writing Natural History

Writing Natural History PDF Author: Edward Lueders
Publisher: University of Utah Press
ISBN: 9780874803235
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 140

Get Book

Book Description
The edited record of four public dialogues held at the University of Utah in 1988 between eminent writers in the fields of natural history.

This Incomparable Land

This Incomparable Land PDF Author: Thomas Jefferson Lyon
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 316

Get Book

Book Description
Nature writing is essential to awakening an ecological way of seeing. The author covers the full spectrum of the genre, including field guides, travel and adventure stories, and essays on solitary and back-country living. This new edition contains an updated bibliography of primary and secondary sources in nature writing through the end of the 20th century.

At Home on this Earth

At Home on this Earth PDF Author: Lorraine Anderson
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 9781584651932
Category : American literature
Languages : en
Pages : 424

Get Book

Book Description
The first chronological presentation of U.S. nature writing by key women authors of the last two centuries.

Such News of the Land

Such News of the Land PDF Author: Thomas S. Edwards
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 9781584650980
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Get Book

Book Description
A collection of new essays establishes women's voices as a powerful presence in US nature writing.

Natural State

Natural State PDF Author: Steven Gilbar
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520212091
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 398

Get Book

Book Description
This is the first anthology of nature writing that celebrates California, the most geographically diverse state in the union. Readers—be they naturalists or armchair explorers—will find themselves transported to California's many wild places in the company of forty noted writers whose works span more than a century. Divided into sections on California's mountains, hills and valleys, deserts, coast, and elements (earth, wind, and fire), the book contains essays, diary entries, and excerpts from larger works, including fiction. As a prelude to the collection, editor Steven Gilbar presents two California Indian creation myths, one a Cahto narrative and the other an A-juma-wi story as told by Darryl Babe Wilson. Familiar names appear in these pages—John Muir, Robert Louis Stevenson, John McPhee, M.F.K. Fisher, Gretel Ehrlich—but less familiar writers such as Daniel Duane, Margaret Millar, and John McKinney are also included. Among the gems in this treasure trove are Jack Kerouac on climbing Mt. Matterhorn, Barry Lopez on snow geese migration at Tule Lake, Edward Abbey on Death Valley, Henry Miller on Big Sur, and Joan Didion on the Santa Ana winds. Gary Snyder's inspiring Afterword reflects the spirit of environmentalism that runs throughout the book. Natural State also reveals the many changes to California's landscape that have occurred in geological time and in human terms. More than a book of "nature writing," this book is superb writing about nature.

A Natural History of North American Trees

A Natural History of North American Trees PDF Author: Donald Culross Peattie
Publisher: Trinity University Press
ISBN: 1595341676
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 512

Get Book

Book Description
"A volume for a lifetime" is how The New Yorker described the first of Donald Culross Peatie's two books about American trees published in the 1950s. In this one-volume edition, modern readers are introduced to one of the best nature writers of the last century. As we read Peattie's eloquent and entertaining accounts of American trees, we catch glimpses of our country's history and past daily life that no textbook could ever illuminate so vividly. Here you'll learn about everything from how a species was discovered to the part it played in our country’s history. Pioneers often stabled an animal in the hollow heart of an old sycamore, and the whole family might live there until they could build a log cabin. The tuliptree, the tallest native hardwood, is easier to work than most softwood trees; Daniel Boone carved a sixty-foot canoe from one tree to carry his family from Kentucky into Spanish territory. In the days before the Revolution, the British and the colonists waged an undeclared war over New England's white pines, which made the best tall masts for fighting ships. It's fascinating to learn about the commercial uses of various woods -- for paper, fine furniture, fence posts, matchsticks, house framing, airplane wings, and dozens of other preplastic uses. But we cannot read this book without the occasional lump in our throats. The American elm was still alive when Peattie wrote, but as we read his account today we can see what caused its demise. Audubon's portrait of a pair of loving passenger pigeons in an American beech is considered by many to be his greatest painting. It certainly touched the poet in Donald Culross Peattie as he depicted the extinction of the passenger pigeon when the beech forest was destroyed. A Natural History of North American Trees gives us a picture of life in America from its earliest days to the middle of the last century. The information is always interesting, though often heartbreaking. While Peattie looks for the better side of man's nature, he reports sorrowfully on the greed and waste that have doomed so much of America's virgin forest.