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Modern British and American Nature Writing:
A Survey of Selected Works, Authors, and Criticism, Late Eighteenth Century
(1789)Present
This literature review focuses on modern British and American writing about natural
history, or nature writing. Nature writing is the term used commonly in the secondary literature
criticism, anthologies, and genre studiesand is more or less equivalent to the term natural
history writing; both terms convey a sense of the traditional role of the naturalist in documenting
their surroundings in a scientific, but literary fashion. Some writers distinguish between science
writing, nature writing, and science and nature writing (Johnson-Sheehan, Bogard 365). This
review considers a fairly expanded definition of nature writing, to include, generally, writing that
is non-fiction, takes as its subject the non-human world, excluding technology, and tends to
make an effort to be impersonal and objective, or at least to appear so. But this review also
considers nature writings many forms, including the philosophical essays of Thoreau;
agricultural writing, an important sub-genre of nature writing, which concerns the technologies
that humans use to draw sustenance from the land; and the subjectivity that characterizes many
important nature writers, like Mark and Delia Owens, who lived in and wrote about Africas
Kalahari desert wilderness for years, interweaving the animals survival struggles with their own.
They write of one among many close calls We could not backtrack with any certainty. We were
lost. With less than a quart of water on board the Land Rover, we could not risk driving farther
from camp [. . .] This was just the type of situation we should have avoided (Owens 30). This
type of subjective involvement in the environment being studied, and the writing about it,
characterizes much of what is considered modern nature writing, and is part of the appeal to the
readersplacing the readers in the context of an environment that may be remote in space and
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time. Viewed in an historic context, even the earliest commonly acknowledged nature writers
exhibited in their writings a personal involvement with their subject, their locale, and so this
common theme of writing as inextricably linked to a place has run through nature writing in the
English tradition continuously for over 200 years.
Much of this writing is concerned with a few essential questions: What is natures
character if not disturbed by humans; what does it mean for nature to be in a state of harmony,
and how are human themes related to any harmony of nature; if humans are a part of nature,
what is their proper role within it? (Botkin, vii, 16).
This review will establish some idea of the total scope of nature writing, its historic
beginnings, important authors and works, and general characteristics in terms of rhetoric and
style. Modern British and American writing will be examined in more detail, not least because
the Anglo-American tradition of nature writing, rich in variety, has a high degree of continuity
over the past two centuries. Several genres and aspects of nature writing will be mentioned only
in passing, to help place the current scholarship in perspective.
Much of this review takes on the tone of an extended definition, because of the
complexities in defining nature writing. What constitutes nature, and what it means to write
about it, becomes very complicated. The idea of nature writing suggests something other than
scientific objectivity, a more subjective type of writing, that includes elements of the naturalists
reacting to their environment, rather than attempting to study it objectively. The range and
volume of nature writing, as it is defined by current literary scholars, suggests that while nature
writing does have some commonly-agreed-upon characteristics, it also covers a vast range of
material, of various types and forms, much like its subject. Perhaps the many forms that the
genre has taken can be attributed to the many forms that its subjectnaturetakes.
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Environments online bibliography of recommended reading shows authors and works from
every continent, with many non-Anglophone countries represented. Finch and Elder point out
that [. . .] the recognition of valid alternative conceptions of nature in other cultures has led to a
series of provocative inquiries: How does the human mind make sense of nature? How does
human meaning in general derive from natural phenomena? And what, ultimately, constitutes the
perennial attraction of and need for things natural in our lives? (28).
NATURAL HISTORYIN FICTION
There is a rich and growing tradition of popular fiction writing that takes nature as a
prominent theme, however this review will concern itself only with non-fiction in its many
forms. Again, to help place the non-fiction writing in context, it is noteworthy that these popular
fiction works are bringing the same natural history- and environment-oriented themes treated in
non-fiction writing to the attention of a wide popular audience, including many who might not
have an interest in non-fiction prose. This trend seems likely destined to, in turn, affect the non-
fiction writing genres.
WHY STUDY NATUREWRITING?
Natural history writers and their works have exerted major influences on the ways that
cultures view and relate to nature; on public policy, from the establishment of huge tracts of
protected wilderness lands, to the banning of DDT, to the acceptance of some technologies
(Stewart 7374, 127, 162163). The method of communicating information about nature can
have important effects on the management of natural resources, for example communicating
forest management practices to the owners of the forests (Paretti 439). In an expanded sense, the
body of nature writing informs human conceptions of how to best manage nature globally, as in
modern scientific ecology. In his work on modern ecological thought, Botkin describes how two
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writing. Throughout the history of this genre, milestone works and their authors have reinvented
what it means to write about nature and humans relationship with it. These authors and their
works can be analyzed, grouped, and compared in terms of taxonomywhat types of works
authors typically producedand in terms of historywhen these authors were writing and how
their works fit into the larger history of nature writing. Each type, or sub-genre, of nature writing
is characterized by specific rhetorical devices, themes, and literary style.
TAXONOMYOFTHE LITERATURE
A taxonomy of works helps to make sense of the larger genre of nature writing in
somewhat the same way that Linnaeuss system of taxonomy helped scientists and laymen alike
make sense of the natural world. It provides general categories for grouping works and authors,
shows how they are related in terms of form and other characteristics, and provides a basis for
comparison.
HISTORYOFTHE LITERATURE
Examining the history of the major works helps put the evolution of the genre into
perspective. Considering the historical aspects of the early and influential works helps make
sense of who the important innovators were, how other writers were influenced by them over
time, and how their works influenced the larger society of scholars, scientists, and laypeople.
Examining the historic aspects of works over time helps establish a sense of the trends within the
genre, its evolution over time, its current state, and where it may be going.
ORGANIZATIONOFTHE REVIEW: LITERARY PERSPECTIVES
This review incorporates the discussion of authors and their works into the discussions of
history and taxonomy of the genre. Nature writers and their works cannot be separated from their
historic matrix, the society in which they lived and wrote, how they reacted to the natural world,
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human society, the technology of their time, and what sort of works they produced; these factors
partially determine how they fit into a taxonomy of the overall genre. In a special issue of
Technical Communications Quarterly devoted to science and nature writing, the guest editor
discusses this historic, locale-based matrix in terms of [. . .] context, (which) becomes an active
agent that shapes thought and prose. He points to this as the central theme that unites science
and nature writing, particularly for writers like Rachel Carson, who are willing [. . .] to engage
with nature in a way that personally affects them, changes them (Johnson-Sheehan, Bogard
365).
TAXONOMY
: TYPES
AND
SUB
-GENRES
During its history in modern Britain and America, several sub-genres have emerged
within the larger genre of nature writing. These sub-genres, or types, provide a useful framework
for discussing the evolution of nature writing. In his anthology of American nature writing This
Incomperable Lande, (sic) Thomas J. Lyon organizes nature writing into various sub-genres
according to the balance that the works exhibit between, on one hand, describing natural history
in terms of facts, and on the other hand describing the writers experience (4). He organizes the
works along a continuum that begins with the more objective worksfield guidesand at the
other end of the spectrum includes works in which the author explicitly expresses his or her
views on humans role in nature, for example John Burroughs Accepting the Universe, in which
he begins his essay The Natural Providence, What unthinking people call design in nature is
simply the reflection of our inevitable anthropomorphism (Lyon, 235).
While nature writing, or writing about natural history, can be divided into various times,
trends, genres, and sub-genres, these divisions are fairly imprecise, as some authors write in
more than one genre, and some very different and influential writers were contemporaries of
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each other. The various sub-genres also span a wide range of styles, from works that attempt to
be as objective as possible to works that are more philosophical and poetic. However, even the
most abstract of the works that are commonly characterized as nature writing are connected to
that most substantial of subjects, nature.
Dividing nature writing into some broad categories, while a somewhat artificial
distinction, helps provide a framework for understanding the various authors, historical periods,
and relationships. This section of the review provides an overview of these sub-genres, and some
examples of works and authors for each.
Field Guides and Professional Papers
Field guides, which are often published as series, are extremely popular resources with
both scientists and amateur naturalists. Designed in small format, for portability (some guides to
aquatic life are even waterproof), and used to identify some aspect of natural history, they are
typically illustrated, and include concise descriptions meant to aid in identification. They may
also include a taxonomic key. Modern field guides may be traced back to books like the Rev. D
Landsboroughs A Popular History of British Zoophytes, or Corallines, in which the
descriptions, [. . .] while fully in the tradition of natural theology, seldom wander far from the
physical nature of the zoophytes (Schmidt xixiii).
The first, most popular, and most well-known modern field guide series (still in print)
was started in 1934 by Roger Tory Peterson. In A Guide to Field Guides, Diane Schmidt reflects
that it is [. . .] difficult to comprehend [. . .] how thoroughly revolutionary his 1934 bird book
was. Peterson was the one of the first, and certainly among the most well-known authors, to use
the term field guide, and to combine all the features of modern field guides together in a single
volume. Both his illustrations and language were innovative (xvxvi).
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Most field guide series are written for amateur naturalists, and many for young people.
The foreword to Reptiles and Amphibians, one of the Golden Nature Guides, puts its purpose
very simply: So many people of all ages want to know about snakes and turtles, frogs and
salamanders, that the Golden Nature Guides would be incomplete without an introduction to
reptiles and amphibians (Zim 2).
Professional papers include documents such as forest management plans, which are used
in making decisions about natural resource management. The rhetorical, stylistic, and structural
features of these documents can have important and long-term practical consequences for natural
resources management (Paretti 439).
Natural History Essays
The defining characteristic of the natural history essay is that, whatever method is used
for presentation, the main point is to convey instruction in facts about nature, for example books
such as John Muirs Studies in the Sierra, published in 18741875 (Lyon 5). Muir made several
significant contributions to the development of the American nature essay: he enlarged its scope
to include wild-country adventures (differentiating him from his contemporary, John Burroughs);
he developed the evolutionary and ecological content; and he introduced an element of militancy,
which, again, differentiated him from Burroughs, who was mostly content to be an observer and
nature philosopher (Lyon 60).
Rachel Carsons writing may also be classified in this category. In Silent Spring, She
followed the classical approach to rhetoric: to please and to teach. It was because of her books
literary qualities that vast numbers of people eagerly read them. Science is the content, but art
enhances its communication and multiplies the persuasiveness of both the scientific argument
and the ecological philosophy that underlies it (Waddell 103104).
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Rambles
Essays in which natural history and the authors presence are more or less equally
important, as in many of John Burroughs works, constitute a classic American form, the
ramble (Lyon 5). This form typically concerns intense observation of a local environment, often
over an extended period of time, and the responses of the observer. Burroughs essays and
collections were extremely popular during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Annie
Dillards Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is another example of this sub-genre. These authors typically
are identified with a region, as Burroughs was identified with the Catskills.
Some elements of the ramble as a sub-genre can also be seen in the writings of Gilbert
White, whose Natural History of Selbourne (1789) records his deep engagement with studying
and writing about the natural history of a single locale for his entire life, and profoundly
influenced nature writers who followed him.
Experience in Nature: Solitude and Back-Country Living
Essays on experience in nature often include instruction in natural history facts, but this
type of essay also focuses on the writer as a protagonistas one who exists in nature,
experiences it, and responds to it, more or less to the exclusion of other social contexts. This sub-
genre includes the writings of the seminal Henry David Thoreau, who wrote his classic Walden
in 1854. Among the few books that Thoreau considered worthy of his bookshelf was a copy of
Gilbert Whites A Natural History of Selbourne. Along with Walden, Thoreau wrote a number of
essays and letters, including A Natural History of Massachusetts, which begins: Books of
natural history make the most cheerful winter reading. I read in Audubon with a thrill of delight,
when the snow covers the ground, of the magnolia, and the Florida keys, and their warm sea-
breezes [. . .] (Bode 31). Thoreau was encouraged to write more natural science and less
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philosophy by some of his contemporaries because of his keen powers of observation and
analysis. However, he went beyond the model that had been established by White, whom he read
and apparently admired, to add a dimension not previously seen in literature to the experience of
nature. He was also a contemporary and short-term follower of Louis Agassiz, the influential
scientist, but had no use for Agassiz methods, for example studying fish preserved in alcohol in
preference to the fish in its native brook (Walls 10). Thoreau, and other writers like him, for
example Edward Abbey, position themselves immediately and firmly in the narrative, making
their struggles with, and reactions to, the natural world a primary focus in their writing. Not
uncommonly, many of the nature writers also wrote about their reactions to other writers
narratives of the natural world. Burroughs, for example, was involved in a famous nature faker
controversy which ultimately involved even then-president (and friend of Burroughs) Theodore
Roosevelt (Walker 170).
Experience in Nature: Travel and Adventure
Shortly after Gilbert Whites Selbourne was published in 1789, William Bartrams
Travels through North and South Carolina (1791) was published as a very early American
example of the travel and adventure narrative; even to the present time, it remains one of the few
important regional studies of the southeast. In an 1864 essay from the anthology A Century of
Early Ecocriticism, Henry Tuckerman, who was himself a naturalist (a prominent lichenologist,
to be precise) and writer, comments on Bartrams Travels The style is more finished than his
father (John Bartram, also a naturalist and writer) could command, more fluent and glowing, but
equally informed with that genuineness of feeling and directness of purpose which give the most
crude writing an indefinable but actual moral charm. This type of early literary criticism of
nature writingnow characterized as ecocriticismshows that nature writing was beginning to
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be recognized as a [. . .] discrete genre with its own criteria of literary excellence (Mazel 20,
24).
Experience in Nature: Farm Life and Agricultural Writing
Within the tradition of British and American nature writing can also be placed works on
agriculture, horticulture, and gardening, all activities that take place at the nexus between
humans and nature. Until fairly recently, most literary scholars tended to ignore nature writing,
and most scientists viewed natural history as quaint, but in Uneven Land: Nature and Agriculture
in American Writing, Stephanie L. Sarver notes that The late 80s brought a refreshed attention
to environmental issues and literary study as scholars turned to nature writingtexts that had
hitherto been regarded as outside of the literary canon. Many embraced Thoreau as an exemplary
naturalist [. . .](6). Agricultural writing also includes contemporary writers such as Wendell
Berry, who, like Aldo Leopold, purchased a burned-out farm and began rehabilitating it, the
process of which is documented in many of his writings. As noted previously, the sense of the
writing being connected with a place, or locale, is central to these writers narratives.
Agricultural writing necessarily is connected intimately to the agriculture and culture of a
specific time and place. For Berry, the locale in which he lives and farms is primary to his
writing and philosophy. The more significant works often explore difficult social and ethical
issues that arise from the relationship between humans and the land.
Sarver goes on to establish connections between agriculture, natural history, ecology, and
literature. The relationships between humans and the natural world are shaped in many ways by
agriculture and related activities, so it figures prominently in our literature. Many important
writers and works in natural history that are not specifically focused on agriculture are strongly
influenced by agricultural themes.
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Mans Role in Nature
At the farthest end of the literary spectrum from the field guides and professional papers
are the analytic essays on man and nature, in which interpretation is primary and natural history
facts, as well as personal experiences, are secondary. Although these works may make the same
points as natural history or personal experience essays, these essays are more abstract (Lyon 7).
Burroughs Accepting the Universe is an example of this type of more philosophical essay. In
this, one of his later works, he [. . .] tries to find a balance between the scriptures he knew from
his parents and those he found in Darwin and Emerson, and in the natural world from his own
many years exploring it [. . .] (Walker 4849).
HISTORY: GROUNDBREAKING WORKSAND AUTHORS
Nature writing, as a recognizable and distinct tradition in English prose, has existed for
over two hundred years [. . .] Since World War II the genre has become an increasingly
significant and popular one, producing some of the finest nonfiction prose of our time (Finch,
Elder 19).
Various sources place the beginnings of the nature writing genre in different places and
times, and with different authors and works. However, a survey of the anthologies and secondary
criticism reveals some commonly agreed-upon works and authors that were clearly important to
the development of nature writing.
Nature writing has achieved a [. . .] unique fullness and continuity within the Anglo-
American context. This is because of a number of factors, including the influence of writers like
Linnaeus, the English literature of naturalist theology (in which authors primarily wrote about
nature in the context of it being evidence for the existence of GodHis creation), the emergence
of an educated leisure class with an interest in nature, and the exploration of early America
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(including commissioning of naturalists by both institutions and governments to travel, map, and
document new specimens) (Elder, Finch 20).
Beginnings: Gilbert White: A Natural History of Selbourne
Linnaeus, with his Systema Naturae (1735), created, for the first time, a framework for
classifying and identifying all living things. His books went into the field with English and
American amateur naturalists, as well as explorers and collectors in the second half of the
eighteenth century and into the nineteenth. One of his readers, and the first commonly
acknowledged nature writer in English, is Gilbert White, whose Natural History of Selbourne
(1789) influenced both Darwin and Thoreau (Finch, Elder 19). White was the pastor of the
Southampton parish of Selbourne, where he lived his entire life and wrote a series of letters that
were eventually published as his Natural History.
Whites importance to this genre may be hinted at in the fact that the authors who
followed him and used him as a model were referred to as the Selbourne Cult. It was more
than a scientific-literary genre modeled after Whites pioneering achievement. A constant theme
of the nature essayists was the search for a lost pastoral haven, for a home in an inhospitable and
threatening world (Finch, Elder 20). In Tales of Locale: The Natural History of Selbourne and
Castle Rackrent, Martha Adams Bohrer explains that The age of the naturalist in England
extended from [. . .] the work of Linnaeus after 1754 until the end of the nineteenth century [. . .]
This interest crossed all classes, from the [. . .] royal family [. . .] to [. . .] working-class botanical
societies in provincial towns. Literary critics in the twenty-first century have lost sight of this
important context so familiar to authors and readers in the nineteenth century (393). She refers
to Whites and other authors works as tales of locale, implying a deep connection between the
writer and the locale in which they live. This was certainly true for White, who lived, explored,
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and wrote in the same small parish (of about 700 residents) for his entire life. She refers to
Whites Selbourne as a seminal, experimental text and says that the [. . .] natural history and
tales of locale generated a new understanding of places as natural and social environments. She
also refers to his work as radically new thick (and systemic) descriptions of locales. He
innovated the representation of animal behavior in nature writing by modifying the more static
local histories that had been produced by his predecessors (394, 416).
This appraisal of Whites experimentalism and importance to the nature writing genre
agrees with many other literary critics and anthologists appraisals. Bohrer credits White with
several important innovations to a literary tradition that had become, by Whites time, more
antiquarian and speculative than natural historical and empirical. White divided his history by
method, with sections based on both direct field observations and textual research. The form he
used for his writing also allowed him the freedom of conversational organization, but still made
it clear that the content of the writing was essentially scientific (395).
Selbourne takes the form of a series of letters, which were the method that most scientists
used to share insights and discoveries before journals became prevalent. While the letters that
make up Selbourne appear casual, they were carefully edited and revised before publication.
Whites [. . .] probing eyes and sensitive ears (generated) accurate, artful, amusing
representations and (offered) convincing evidence that all nature is so full, that that district
produces the greatest variety which is the most examined (417). This intense study of a limited
locality was to be later taken up and turned into a uniquely American literary form by John
Burroughs, whose rambles around his native mountain New England farm country contrasted
sharply with the wild explorations of his contemporary, John Muir, who chose to spend many
years exploring (and almost dying in) some of the wildest parts of Canada and America.
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Whites pastoral themes can be traced to the ancient literary traditions exemplified in
Theocrituss Idylls and Virgils Eclogues. White, however, takes a more active role as naturalist
than the ancients, who were more interested in a temporary escape from the
[. . .] world of cities, labor, and war than in studying nature (Finch, Elder 21). White is
interested in discovering the landscape, observing, exploring, and documenting his findings in a
scientific, but also literary, manner. He was first English writer generally considered to be a
nature writer in the modern sense.
Darwin and the Shift in Scientific Style
Among other authors and works, Darwin and his Origin of Species started a process of
evolution in scientific thought beyond Linnaeus relatively static hierarchies. Darwins work
stimulated a revolution in life science research; however, scientific writing shifted away from
Darwins own fairly accessible writing style and towards A white-coated, impersonal style
(which) became the established voice of objective science. After Darwin, nature writers who
have retained and embraced the older tradition of natural history have done so as exemplifying a
way to [. . .] respond to the physical creation in ways that, while scientifically informed, are also
marked by a personal voice and concern for literary values (Finch, Elder 22). This may be a
reaction against the more impersonal, objective writing style adopted by the scientific
community after Darwin. The contrast between these approaches could be seen in early
American science, between the objectively scientific approach of Louis Agassiz and that of his
contemporary, the literary, but still scientific, Thoreau (Walls 1).
Thoreau and Literary Science
In America, Thoreau was a crucial figure in mid-nineteenth century America, and not
only wrote some of the nature writing genres most influential, philosophical, and literary works,
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but also anticipated its future growth into our own century. Just as White expanded on the
traditions of the ancient pastoralists, Thoreau expands on Whites earlier tradition by adding a
touch of ironic awareness to his writing that made it more appropriate to his audience and
times. Thoreau also introduced the idea of protecting the environment, perhaps the earliest
stirrings of a conservation movement in America, unlike White, whoalthough he lived through
the first wave of industrialization of Englandnever even mentions it (Finch, Elder 2223).
To Thoreau, knowledgesciencecould only be relational, not absolute, for the
preconceptions of the knower inevitably inflected the knowledge of any object. [. . .] for Thoreau
the inflections became [. . .] the most significant part of the (scientific) process. In her article
Textbooks and Texts from the Brooks: Inventing Scientific Authority in America, Laura
Dassow Walls talks about how Thoreau followed the methods of the influential scientist Louis
Agassiz for a short time, then rejected them: Thoreau would remain [. . .] a naturalist [. . .] for
all his fascination with and attention to science, Thoreau would not himself become a scientist.
He would, of course, become literary (1). Aggasiz and Thoreau embodied a much older
conflict between science and literature, one that predated the uncertainty of postmodernism.
Walls point out that The conflict Thoreau felt with the scientific authority of Agassiz has itself a
continuous history [. . .] the view that scientific truth is a human construct and must therefore be
contingent, not absolute, is not the sudden and shocking progeny of postmodernism, but has a
currency continuous with the development of science itself (21). In these terms, Walls shows
how Agassiz modern and objective approach was discredited within his own lifetime, while
Thoreaus literary approach to natural science is gaining increased attention in our postmodern
world, where objectivity is seen increasingly as difficult if not impossible, and perhaps not even
desirable or useful. Modern criticism of nature writingecocriticismseems to be just catching
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up with Thoreau.
The American Tradition: Burroughs and Muir, Among Many
John Burroughs and John Muir, contemporaries to each other, were guided at least in part
by the heritage of Gilbert White and Selbourne. Writers such as Burroughs and Muir provide
[. . .] an alternative to cold sciencenot by retreat into unexamined dogmatism, but by
restoring to scientific inquiry some of the warmth, breadth, and piety which had been infused
into it by the departed parson-naturalist (Gilbert White) (Finch, Elder 20).
The environmental movement began in the second half of the nineteenth century,
coinciding with the literary works of Burroughs and Muir, who both traced their literary roots
back to Thoreau, although each took the tradition in very distinct and personal directions.
Important political and industrial figures of the time, including Theodore Roosevelt and Harvey
Firestone, were influenced by these writers works, as well as by personal association (Finch,
Elder 23).
The Dawn of Ecology: Carson, Leopold
After Burroughs and Muir, writers like Rachel Carson and Aldo Leopold, both highly
trained scientists, started creating literary works that incorporated knowledge from the then-new
field of scientific ecology, and to try to place the new findings on ecology within a meaningful
social and ethical contexthow modern man could and should try to live in a world that he has
the potential to alter significantly in ways that earlier writers did not consider (Finch, Elder 24).
Leopold was a graduate of the masters program in forestry from Yale at the dawn of the
twentieth century, and was schooled in Gifford Pinchots sustained-yield theory of
environmental management (Stewart 145). He had a brilliant career in the forest service, and yet
began to have doubts about the theories he had been taught, based on his personal experiences in
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the field. In 1933 he became head of game management in the Department of Agricultural
Economics at the University of Wisconsin, where he began also to explore the surrounding
countrysidethe same countryside that John Muir had tramped around a century earlier.
Leopold found an environment changed and degraded since the days of Muir. In 1948, A Sand
County Almanac was published, an account of his work to revive a burned-out farm that he had
purchased, along with the meditations engendered by a lifetime of education in scientific
management, practical field experience, and insightful thought. Toward the end, he sums up:
[. . .] a system of conservation based solely on economic self-interest is hopelessly lopsided. It
tends to ignore, and thus eventually to eliminate, many elements in the land community that lack
commercial value, but that are (as far as we know) essential to its healthy functioning [. . .] An
ethical obligation on the part of the private owner is the only visible remedy for these situations
(Leopold 214). Leopold, like Carson, had the scientific background and practical field
experience to lend his work authority, a sense of ethical commitment to the environment, and the
literary ability to communicate his insights effectively to a popular audience.
Current American Nature writing: Edward Abbey and Beyond
Modern American nature writing encompasses a wide range of styles and authors,
including poets (Wendell Berry), novelists (Peter Matthiessen), and essayists (Barry Lopez).
Nature writing [. . .] fuses literatures attention to style, form, and the inevitable ironies of
expression with a scientific concern for palpable fact [. . .] nature writing asserts both the
humane value of literature and the importance to a mature individuals relationship with the
world of understanding fundamental physical and biological processes (Finch, Elder 25).
Edward Abbey embodies many of the trends and themes in current nature writing in his
work. In spite of being largely ignored by the eastern literary press, the paperback version of his
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classic Desert Solitaire is in its sixteenth printing. Another example of the wide range of opinions
held by various authors classified as nature writers, Abbey is difficult to define in terms of
simply being a nature writer, even though his most important works are not separable from their
place and time, the American southwestern desert in the last part of the twentieth century. Nor
can they be separated from Abbeys personal reactions to the environment and what he sees
happening to it. Abbey says in his preface to the 1988 reprint of Desert Solitaire: I have never
looked inside a book by Muir or Burroughs and dont intend to. The few such writers whom I
wholly admire are those, like Thoreau, who went far beyond simple nature writing to become
critics of society, of the state, or our modern industrial culture (xi). With Abbey, its difficult to
tell when he is being literal, although it seems to be seldom; he likely would have a fairly high
regard for Muirs environmental activism, if not his writing.
Modern Trends: Ecocriticism, Ecocomposition, and Environmental Rhetoric
Ecocriticism can be briefly defined as studying literature in a way that emphasizes
environmental themes. Surveys of early ecocriticism show works dating from at least as early as
1864, so the practice of reading texts in terms of their connections to nature has a long history.
More recently, the term ecocriticism was coined by William Reueckert in his 1978 essay
Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism. Reuckerts essay was later included in
Cheryl Glotfeltys Ecocriticism Reader (1996), in which she observes that ecologically
informed criticism had been extant at least since the 1970s (Mazel 1). So, while something that
could be characterized as ecocriticism has been developing in British and American literary
criticism for well over 100 years, beginning around the late 1970s it has begun to be more
defined and developed as a distinct discipline within literary criticism. ASLE provides an
Introduction to Ecocriticism page on their internet site that includes links to a variety of
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articles in journals such as the PMLA, as well as popular magazines such as The Nation, that
provide extended definitions of, and different perspectives on, modern ecocriticism, and examine
its importance in the current world of literature, as well as to a more popular audience. From the
volume and variety of articles, one can infer that ecocriticism has attracted serious interest from a
wide range of quarters in the academic and popular worlds.
In his article From Environmental Rhetoric to Ecocomposition and Ecopoetics: Finding
a Place for Professional Communication, M. Jimmie Killingsworth surveys some of the more
important works in ecocriticisms counterpart in the composition world, ecocomposition. He is
particularly interested in the works and aspects of ecocomposition related to technical and
professional writing, but his survey, and his observations on ecocomposition in general, echo a
number of themes that been developing in British and American nature writing for over 200
years. He observes that there was a [. . .] tendency to classify environmental concerns topically
and vocationally [. . .], which led to most writers identified with environmental rhetoric,
scientific rhetoric, and technical communication to produce books that focused on specifically
environmental themes. Killingsworth points out that ecocritics, in the quest to make their work
special and different, created a canon of privileged texts, for example the essays of Thoreau.
He characterizes this professionalization of the environment as leading to the idea that only
certain groupsnature writers, for exampleare concerned with the environment and ecology,
and says that this specialization follows the trend of modernism in general (361, 362).
Killingsworth shows that writers like Rachel Carson contributed to a body of literature
that was primarily focused on disaster themes, and nature, as viewed in much current
environmental discourse studies, is seen as [. . .] not so much the source and setting of life, but
as a problem or [. . .] disaster waiting to happen [. . .] (363). He distinguishes between the fields
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of environmental rhetoric, ecocriticism, and environmental communication, and also shows that
they all seem to have shared a focus on nature as a problem to solve. He goes on to suggest some
new possibilities.
Killingsworth suggests that all writing connects to an environment and mentions
several sources that establish and explore this theme. He mentions a number of literary scholars
that are developing the approach to teaching writing known as ecocomposition and finds that
For them, ecology becomes something more than a set of themes that occupy the attention of a
special group of authors and texts, in contrast to the prevalent perception of both the popular
readers and most ecocritics. Criticizing the tendency of professional communications studies to
focus on workplaces and global communities, he emphasizes the importance of place, or locale,
in writing, continuing themes started by Gilbert White with Selbourne in the late eighteenth
century. He offers some guidelines for a new pedagogy of teaching writing using the principles
of ecocomposition to begin integrating nature writingwhich, in the current century, seems to
be synonymous with ecological and environmental awarenessinto the professional writing
curriculum (370).
RELATIVE IMPORTANCEOFTHE SOURCES
The specific contributions and important points of the various books, book articles,
journal articles, primary, and secondary sources are detailed in the discussions of taxonomy and
history, but the following general summary helps provide some perspective on the sources in
terms of the various types.
The anthologies in general establish important guidelines for what authors and works are
considered important, and some explanation of why they are important. The anthologies also
provide historical context, organizing works in order of publication. They show how the works
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and their authors are interrelated, both in the sense of the authors relationships to their works,
and in the sense of the authors influences on each other, sometimes as contemporaries,
sometimes over time. They also help to establish taxonomies of nature writing, organizing the
works into broad sub-genres, which helps to provide some framework for studying them (Lyon
3).
The various secondary articles provide scholarly insights into the historic importance of
each author and work that they examine. They provide historic details and compare the authors
to other writers on the basis of similarities and differences. This sort of comparison sometimes
leads to interesting connections among authors and works, and suggests directions for future
research that may have been previously unsuspected. The critical articles can also provide
detailed theoretical discussions and analyses of the primary sources, which help clarify why
these texts are considered important.
Sometimes articles are collected into anthologies of literary criticism for important
authors; for example Coyote in the Maze is a collection of critical essays on Edward Abbeys
writing. In Coyote, Claire Lawrence contributes an analysis titled Getting the Desert into a
Book that addresses the problems nature writing encounters in representation of reality in a
postmodern world. She makes the point that while poststructuralists and eco-critics may seem to
have little in common, the poststructuralist recognition that part of the problem in literary
representation, a [. . .] rupture in the relationship between word and object is a problem that
nature writers are very familiar with. While poststructuralists consider eco-critics as simplistic
and eco-critics see poststructuralists as nihilists, there may still be some common philosophical
ground between them in terms of what is real and meaningful (Quigley 150). An understanding
of critical viewpoints such as this in terms of current theory and scholarship is important to any
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characterized in ways that allow us to make sense of it in human terms, that humans can make
sense of their relation to nature, that humans can influence the state of nature through writing
about itall these ideas seem to be taken up by current nature writers, and developed in terms of
our current times. With the developing science of scientific ecology and the recognition that
nature writing is a valid genre, with scientific as well as literary value, nature writing could be
poised to undergo another dramatic change in literary form.
With digital technologies, not only the writing, but the presentation and physical form of
nature writing texts could undergo a radical change. There is already a tradition within nature
writing of integrating text and illustrations, either drawings, paintings, or photographs, for
example the work of Peter Matthiessen with the photographer Eliot Porter (The Tree Where Man
was Born/The African Experience), the various types of illustrated field guides (for example, the
Golden Nature Guides and Peterson Field Guides), and the popular natural science articles,
magazines, and books, for example The World We Live In, which was originally published as a
series of articles in Life magazine in the 1950s.
The field guide/popular natural science book model seems most suited to extension using
the newer technologies of multimedia and presentation on screens. There are already projects
underway to digitize collections of specimens and early texts and make them available over the
internet. For example, at the Academy of Natural Sciences Albert M. Greenfield digital imaging
center, the Academys entire stock of collections is being digitized for distribution over the
internet. The Macphail Woods Ecological Forestry project on Prince Edward Island has created
an online field guide that could represent a growing trend toward publishing natural history
information on the internet (Schmidt, xx).
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POSSIBLE DIRECTIONSFORFUTURE STUDY
The subject of nature writing offers a wide range of possibilities for future studies that
would be interesting from a scholarly viewpoint, as well as practical in the sense of professional
writing and literature accomplishing work in the world. The following list represents a few
promising areas for specialization.
International nature writingstudies of how various languages and cultures have represented
nature in literature.
British colonial writingsstudies of responses to natural history by the British living in
colonies in India and other locales. For example, this area of study could include literature
such as surveys of Indian wildlife written in the days of the British colonies; this type of
study could be characterized as belonging to the growing field of environmental history,
although with a specific focus on literary aspects.
Gilbert White, Burroughs, and others writers in the genre considered writers of rambles and
locale-based writingstudies of locale seem to run through the entire history of nature
writing, and seem to still be important to current writers and theorists in the field of
environmental rhetoric and technical and scientific writing.
Agricultural writingstudies along the lines of the literature of sustainable agriculture and
appropriate technology.
Natural history information on the internetstudies of major digitizing projects, multimedia
projects, and other related projects, comparing and contrasting these newer presentation
methods to the older texts.
INSIGHTS: WRITING NATURAL HISTORY
Nature writing has a history that reaches back, in the British and American tradition, at
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least to the late eighteenth century. It has evolved into many forms over the years, and has been
the chosen genre for many important writers. Common themes, for example, locale, have
emerged and remained important for the genre since its beginnings. Nature writing, and the
various forms it has engendered, or is related toenvironmental rhetoric, ecocriticism,
ecocompositionhas been, and continues to be, important to scholars and laypeople alike, as
they seek the answers to the basic questions that were formed at the beginning of the discipline:
What is the character of non-human nature; what is the harmony of nature; how do human
themes relate to this harmony; and what is humanitys proper role in nature? (Botkin, vii, 16).
These are themes that have still not been fully explored, and future nature writers and scholars of
nature writing will continue to add their insights to this area of literary studies.
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Bode, Carl, ed. The Portable Thoreau. New York: Viking P, 1947.
Bohrer, Martha Adams. Tales of Locale: The Natural History of Selbourne and Castle
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Botkin, Daniel B. Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-First Century. New
York: Oxford UP, 1990.
Bryson, Michael A. Nature, Narrative, and the Scientist-Writer: Rachel Carsons and Loren
Eisleys Critique of Science. Technical Communication Quarterly 12 (2003): 369387.
Finch, Robert, and John Elder, ed. The Norton Book of Nature Writing. New York: Norton,
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International Field Guides: A Web Supplement to A Guide to Field Guides by Diane Schmidt.
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368.
Killingsworth, M. Jimmie. From Environmental Rhetoric to Ecocomposition and Ecopoetics:
Finding a Place for Professional Communication. Technical Communication Quarterly
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Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac. New York: Oxford UP, 1949.
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Matthiessen, Peter. Tigers in the Snow. New York: North Point, 2000.
and Eliot Porter. The Tree Where Man Was Born/The African Experience. New York:
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Owens, Mark and Delia. Cry of the Kalahari: An American Couples Seven Years in Africas
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Quigley, Peter, ed. Coyote in the Maze: Tracking Edward Abbey in a World of Words. Salt Lake
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Sarver, Stephanie. Uneven Land: Nature and Agriculture in American Writing. Lincoln: U of
Nebraska P, 1999.
Schmidt, Diane. A Guide to Field Guides: Identifying the Natural History of North America.
Englewood: Libraries Unlimited, 1999.
Sherman, Charles L., ed. Natures Wonders in Full Color. Garden City, New York: Hanover
House, 1956.
Stewart, Frank. A Natural History of Nature Writing. Washington, D.C.: Island, 1995.
Thompson, Edward K., ed. The World We Live In. New York: Time, 1955.
Waddell, Craig, ed. And No Birds Sing: Rhetorical Analyses of Rachel Carsons Silent Spring.
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Walker, Charlotte Zoe, ed. Sharp Eyes: John Burroughs and American Nature Writing. Syracuse:
Syracuse UP, 2000.
Walls, Laura Dassow. Textbooks and Texts from the Brooks: Inventing Scientific Authority in
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Wiley, Farida A, ed. . John Burroughs America: Selections From the Writings of the Naturalist
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