Saving the Earth

Article: American Nature Writing Before Walden

The European discovery of the New World loosed a torrent of wondering description of its natural riches. Early explorers eagerly mapped, sketched, collected animal and plant specimens and followed every river to its source - or to the sea.

Here are books from the explorers Cabeza de Vaca, William Dunbar, John Charles Fremont, Lewis and Clark, Thomas Nuttall and John Kirk Townsend; early settlers De Crevecoeur, Susan Fenimore Cooper, and Thomas Morton; naturalists and scientific observers John James Audubon, William Bartram, Mark Catesby, and Thomas Jefferson; travellers John Lawson, Prince Maximilian, and William Wood; and the transcendental philosopher and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson. Gilbert White is included here because he essentially invented the nature essay, writing about the natural life he observed around him in his English country parish.

So, before Thoreau went to Walden Pond to live, there was a rich tradition of observing nature in the English-speaking world. The books in this section are a delightful sampling of early American nature writing.

David Yarian, Ph.D.

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