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Sometimes the best way to appreciate the natural wonders of our planet is to see it through the eyes of another. To commemorate Earth Month, Bloomsbury Collections celebrates environmentalist writers whose words continue to inspire readers by honoring nature and advocating conservation. Scroll down for free-to-read essays about some of the activists, poets, and philosophers who have changed the way we view the natural world.
John Muir was more than just an environmental philosopher and founder of the Sierra Club. He was a worldwide traveler, lifelong pacifist, committed naturalist, and crusading preservationist. In this chapter from Spiritual Ecology: A Quiet Revolution, author Leslie E. Sponsel sheds light on Muir’s enduring relationship with nature, and his devotion to the three components of spiritual ecology: intellectual, spiritual, and activist.
Plants are silent and steadfast; so much so that we may not consider how they accompany us throughout our lives, or possibly even perceive our existence. The essay collection Dispersion: Thoreau and Vegetal Thought draws from the research and insights of Henry David Thoreau to consider our ongoing relationship with plant and tree life. In this provided selection, author Jane Bennett describes Thoreau as a man with unique sensitivity to natural influences, and how that awareness enhanced his relationship with Mother Earth.
While conservationist and writer Rachel Carson may be best known for her work Silent Spring (1962), about the environmental harm caused by pesticides, her previous work Under the Sea-Wind (1941) has endured as well, a book examining the strength of marine organisms. This provided chapter from ocean, one of Bloomsbury Academic’s texts from its Object Lessons series, brings new light to Carson’s first published work by considering it within its historical context and examining how the book explores the mystery of ocean life through a marriage of poetry and science.
Devotees of nature writing and Scottish modernist literature are likely familiar with Nan Shepherd and her memoir The Living Mountain, written in the 1940s but not published until 1977. Author Samantha Walton inspires new enthusiasm for Shepherd’s writing with her book The Living World: Nan Shepherd and Environmental Thought, the first work to examine Shepherd’s prose and fiction through an ecocritical lens. Read this selected chapter, which traces the history of Shepherd’s memoir recounting her life in the Cairngorm mountains and the book’s profound contribution to ecocriticism.
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