Nature Writing Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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The nature writing style of nonfiction prose about the natural environment often draws from scientific discoveries and facts about nature, commonly in a first-person narrative, and usually includes philosophical reflections on the natural world.

Some early writers mentioned animals in their texts; the descriptions of crocodiles by the Greek writer Herodotus (c. 485-25 B.C.E.) are probably the best-known in ancient literature. However, it was Gilbert White (1720-93) who was the first nature writer in the modern tradition. He was born in the village of Selborne, Hampshire, England. Trained as an Anglican clergyman, he returned to Selborne as the village curate. During his 20 years there he wrote a large number of letters about observations from his garden, from which 110 were collected and published as The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789). The book quickly became popular and has remained in print ever since.

The next nature writer was the American William Bartram (1739-1823), son of the Pennsylvanian botanist John Bartram (1699-1777). The father was hailed by Linneaus as “the greatest natural botanist in the world,” and his son wrote Travels (1791) which influenced many English writers of the Romantic period. John James Audubon (1785- 1851), worked on his famous Birds of America, which was published between 1827 and 1838 in 87 portfolios. At the same time, British ornithologist John Gould (1804-81) put together his multivolume books Birds of Europe, Birds of Australia, Birds of Asia, and Birds of Great Britain. However, the works of Audubon and Gould are better known for their pictures than their text.

Even though Bartram’s work predates that of Henry David Thoreau (1817-62), Thoreau is recognized as the father of American nature writing. He was from Concord, Massachusetts, and as a teacher was fond of long walks studying nature. His book Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854), became an American classic, with further works, including his daily journal, being published posthumously.

A number of explorers also wrote about nature. German naturalist Alexander Humboldt (1769-1859) worked with Aime Bonpland (1773-1858) with Humboldt’s book Kosmos gaining him wide notice. Humboldt’s work was largely technical in nature, and quite unlike the nature writing of Charles Darwin (1809-82) and Lord Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913). Darwin described his voyage around the world in his book Journal of Researches into the Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries Visited by HMS Beagle (1839) and later put together his ideas about evolution through natural selection in On the Origins of Species (1859).

Although his books never sold as well as those by Darwin, Lord Alfred Russel’s Palm Trees of the Amazon and Their Uses and Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro (both published in 1853), and The Malay Archipelago: The Land of the Orang-Utan, and the Bird of Paradise (1869), remain important in their descriptions of Latin America, the Malay Peninsula, and the Indonesian Archipelago.

Others associated with the concept of nature writing include U.S. writers Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82), Aldo Leopold (1887-1948), and John Muir (1838-1914). Edward Abbey (1927-89), author of Desert Solitaire (1968) and the novel The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975) about environmental guerilla warfare, specifically rejected the term nature writer for himself, although others give him that title.

Rachel Carson’s (1907-64) early books Under the Sea-Wind (1941) and The Sea Around Us (1951) were nature writing, and she became famous for Silent Spring (1963). Another important nature writer was William Henry Hudson (1841-1922), who was born in Argentina to American parents. He wrote a number of books about South America, with a heavy emphasis on ornithology.

Other recent American nature writers include Rick Bass, Wendell Berry, Christopher Camuto, Annie Dillard, Gretel Ehrlich, John Elder, Bernd Heinrich, Sue Hubbell, William Kittredge, Barry Lopez, Bill McKibben, John McPhee, Sy Montgomery, Gary Paul Nabhan, Richard Nelson, Sam Pickering, Michael Pollan, Richard Proenneke, Robert Michael Pyle, David Quamme, Janisse Ray, Scott Russell Sanders, Gary Snyder, Edwin Way Teale, and Terry Tempest Williams.

Bibliography:

Karla Ambruster, Beyond Nature Writing: Expanding the Boundaries of Ecocriticism (University Press of Virginia, 2001);
Steven Gilbar, ed., Natural State: A Literary Anthology of California Nature Writing (University of California Press, 1998);
Richard Kerridge and Neil Sammells, , Writing the Environment: Ecocriticism and Literature (Zed, 1998).