4 - American Nature Writing: 1700–1900

Summary

With a focus on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this chapter recounts the history of American nature writing in its many iterations. Like the essay in general, nature writing is a hybrid form. It is omnivorous, incorporating elements of travel writing, natural philosophy, ethnography, diarism, and epistolary writing. Nature writing of the period in question is filled with technical information on plants and animals, agricultural practices, and methods for hunting or navigating, but it also abounds with metaphysical speculations, theological pronouncements, elaborate landscape descriptions, and dramatic accounts of practices like hiking, camping, fishing, and farming. Authors of many of the most well-known essays had professional ties to disciplines like geology, botany, and forestry. Featured essayists in this chapter include St. John de Crèvecoeur, Meriwether Lewis, John Wesley Powell, John Muir, Susan Fenimore Cooper, Henry David Thoreau, and John James Audubon, among others.