Before Walden
INTRODUCTION
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In the Overview chapter of this EC History Section, I created a list of major themes, in rough chronological order, which have defined the literary evolution of the EC Movement through the end of the 20th century. Most of the books in the Collection published during the period before 1854, when Henry David Thoreau published Walden, are generally consistent with the first four of these themes:
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1. European discovery, exploration and settlement of North and South America.
2. Religion/Natural theology - the idea that nature is the creation of a higher power and is thus of inherent value.
3. An explosion of interest and advances in scientific study of the natural world.
4. The development of concepts such as "picturesque" and "sublime," particularly applied to natural landscapes.
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As discussed in the Overview Chapter, humankind came into the second half of the second millennium AD with a fear of unchecked wilderness which Roderick Nash, taking a biological-evolutionary perspective, attributes in part to the prehistoric humans' preference for open spaces where their superior eyesight and greater planning capacity compensated for their relative deficiencies compared to animals in hearing, smelling, strength and speed. This antipathy carried through to the ancient Greeks, the Romans and the bible. Folktales across multiple cultures populated wilderness with fantastical and dangerous creatures. Nash maintains that the "belief that good Christians should maintain an aloofness from the pleasures of the world also helped determine attitude toward wilderness." [Nash p. 19].
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This view towards wilderness carried through to the original non-native settlers of the North American continent. From the Pilgrims on, the wilderness was viewed as "howling", "dismal", "terrible" - while rural, pastoral, tamed landscape represented an ideal, an Eden.
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Religion was an important element to many, even most, of the natural historians of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Indeed, many were ministers, parsons, vicars and the like. In England, the curricula at premier universities Cambridge and especially Oxford through the latter half of the 19th century were geared primarily toward training for the ministry. Consequently, many of the Great Britain's brightest minds - of a certain class - received university education and then became members of the clergy (typically the Church of England). Indeed, such was the intended path of Darwin, but mercifully he was diverted.
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The balance of this chapter is divided into a general discussion including most of the works in the Collection from this period. A separate section is devoted to Alexander von Humboldt given his extraordinary importance and influence on virtually every 19th and early 20th century author discussed throughout this site.
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THE DAWN
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John Josselyn [Link] was an Englishman, described by Nash as "the foremost botanist of the seventeenth century" (p. 53), who made two visits to colonial New England, one in 1638 and a second in 1663. Following the second trip, he published New England Rarities (1671) and An Account of two Voyages to New England (1674), containing extensive descriptions of the flora and fauna of the region and, critically, noting the changes that had occurred between the two visits, such as the decline in turkeys and other game animals in the area.
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Lyon attributes "what is probably the first interpretive ecological statement in American literature" to Two Voyages to New England (1674). "Some particular creatures cannot live in every particular place or region, especially with the same joy or felicity as it did where it was first bred, for the certain agreement of nature that is between the place and the thing bred in that place....As appearth by Elephants, which being translated and brought out of the Second or Third Climate, though they may live, yet will they never ingender [sic] or bring forth young. So for plants, Birds &c." Lyons adds: "What we see in Josselyn's interesting work is many of the materials of the American nature essay assembling loosely, in effect, ahead of their time. Those materials would begin to jell as parts of a recognized view of the world, and as a literary possibility, about a century after Josselyn." (Lyon pp. 28-9).
The copies of the two books in the Collection are limited editions published by William Veazie in 1865. Two Voyages was once owned by Justin Winsor, an important librarian, historian and cartographer from Boston.
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John Ray [Link] was one of the early parson-naturalists who published important works on botany, zoology, taxonomy and what is termed natural theology (or physico-theology), which argues for the existence of a god based on reason and the experience with nature. He was "[t]he son of a blacksmith, who became one of England's greatest naturalists." [OCEL]. His most popular work was The Wisdom of God Manifested in Works of the Creation (1691 - the copy in the Collection is the second, expanded edition of 1692), in which he went beyond classification to describe how nature worked as a whole - primarily to demonstrate his god's existence but also taking a nascent ecological approach. He also, quite notably, argued that all nature was not created solely for the benefit of humankind: "....it is a generally received Opinion, that all this visible World was created for Man, that Man is the end of the Creation; as if there were no other End of any Creature, but some way or other to be serviceable to Man....For my part, I cannot believe that all Things in the World were so made for Man, that they have no other Use." Per Lyon, "The effect of the new doctrine was to give a great push forward to natural history." [Lyon p. 29]. Mabey in his biography of Gilbert White notes that natural theology "was an exploration of design in nature and a celebration of the miraculous way that the world fitted together and worked...in making clear the connections...between the way that organisms lived and the character of their surroundings, Ray....[was] also pioneering the study of ecology." [Mabey pp 11-12]. Ray's lasting influence is demonstrated by the fact that even today there are three institutions in England named after him, the Ray Society, the John Ray Society, and the John Ray Initiative, all active as of this writing.
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While Ray and his natural theology cohorts were certainly influential, Mabey notes that: "What is missing from the mainstream of natural history in the mid-eighteenth century was any sense of intimacy or wonder or respect - in short, of human engagement with nature. In some ways the contemporary belief in the power of reason was as great an obstruction to understanding as it was a means to knowledge. It tended to give humans an overdeveloped feeling of superiority over nature..." [p. 11].
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The one man who probably had the most influence at the time in changing this lack of intimacy, wonder and respect was Alexander von Humboldt, who is so important and so interesting that he gets his own separate section below. But before him there was an otherwise unknown, unassuming parson named Gilbert White [Link], from an obscure village in Hampshire (about 50 miles southwest of London), whose Natural History of Selborne (1789) was "the first work of natural history to attain the status of an English classic." [Sources: Britannica]. Mabey writes:
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Choosing as his arena the smallest and most intimate unit of human social life, a country village where he lived himself, he showed how watching the natural world at close quarters could generate not just understanding but respect, and an insight into the kindredness of living things. It was this blending of the scientific and emotional responses to nature that was White's greatest legacy, and its influence has been far-reaching. It helped foster the growth of ecology, and the realization that humans were also part of the natural scheme of things. [Sources: Mabey p. 6].
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Selborne was "an early great contribution to ecology, White’s volume addresses multiple fields, including biology, phenology, botany, meteorology, and ornithology.... White creates a new approach to studying nature, through minute observations and real data, interspersed with letters to other naturalists. His volume provides an empirical perspective toward natural migrations and biotic populations..." [Sources: Beloit College]. Selborne is structured as a compendium of letters from White to two contemporary naturalists, about half of which were actually sent and some written specifically for the book. It is described as giving a charming and holistic view of a life and an environment in pre-industrial England. It has been in print continuously since 1789 with more than 300 editions and is said to be the fourth most published work in English behind the Bible, Shakespeare and Bunyon's A Pilgrim's Progress (although that statistic was probably written before Harry Potter was born :).
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What is perhaps most remarkable about White is how unremarkable he was. He was clearly intelligent - he did go to Oxford - but one is struck reading his biography just how ordinary he was. He seldom traveled far, and then only to visit Oxford or family. He was never the vicar at Selborne, just the curate. He was assiduous, observant, curious and competent, but certainly not ambitious in the traditional sense - his only book took him two decades and a lot of encouragement to complete, and he published just one other paper. Part of his appeal is certainly that he captured a place and a lifestyle largely insulated from the broader world. For unique geographical reasons, Selborne was an unusually independent and self-contained little village. A big part of White's appeal was capturing a simple life in a simple place shortly before it too succumbed to the effects of the industrial revolution. But whatever the reason for its enduring appeal, it is a work of extraordinary impact, from an ordinary man.
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The budding appreciation in 18th century England for the natural landscape made a large leap in the works of William Gilpin [Link], also an English cleric and educator who introduced the concept of "Picturesque" into landscape appreciation. His works, which began with his Essay on Prints (1768) and continued with a number of works including Three Essays: On Picturesque Beauty; On Picturesque Travel; and on Landscape Sketching...(1791), were focused primarily in developing and teaching a framework for viewing and painting natural scenes, but have had a continuing impact on the standards we use to see and appreciate landscapes, an important step in the development of an appreciation of nature for its own sake, a necessary precursor to the EC movement. The copy of these works in the Collection is from the personal library of William Reese, perhaps the preeminent U.S. authority on and dealer of rare books over the past half-century.
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The father of American botany (literally and figuratively) was John Bartram (1699-1777) [Link], who published two short but important works Observations ... (1751) about a lengthy botanical exploratory trip from Pennsylvania north ultimately into Canada, and An Account... (1766) about a similar trip to Florida and the southeastern U.S. (Per the Catalogue, the full titles of the works are quite lengthy). Bartram was self-taught but became, according to preeminent taxonomist and scientist Carl Linnaeus, "the greatest natural botanist in the world." He had a thriving business collecting and sending botanical specimens to Europe and corresponded with many of the great scientific minds in Europe.
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Bartram was a Quaker and an early abolitionist who freed his own slaves. His garden on the banks of the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, which hosted such luminaries as George Washington, is still preserved and open to the public.
Bartram was friends with fellow Philadelphian Benjamin Franklin, to whom he suggested a western exploration - a suggestion passed along by Franklin to President Jefferson (who was also a friend of Bartram's). Jefferson dispatched Lewis & Clark [Link] (whose Journals are included in the Collection in a limited-edition set published in 1959), with instructions strikingly similar to Bartram's suggestions. The Journals, published in multiple volumes after the 1806-08 expedition, awakened Americans to the incredible variety of the country's landscape.
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John Bartram's Observations... is bound with a 15-page account of Niagra Falls by Peter Kalm [Link], a Swedish naturalist who was a student of Linnaeas and the "first European thoroughly trained in Enlightenment science." [Lyon p. 32]. Kalm traveled the northern colonies extensively for 2.5 years seeking plant specimens suitable to the Swedish climate. Kalm, like Josselyn, was early in recognizing the negative impact of humanity's wastefulness and greed on the environment.
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John Bartram's son William Bartram [Link] accompanied his father as a youngster on many of his travels. He early became a skilled drawer of natural subjects - his father's principal European correspondent, Peter Collison, showed William's drawings to various friends. One was Dr. John Fothergill, a physician who in his spare time studied botany and built an extensive botanical garden, with specimens obtained from both John and William Bartram among others. Fothergill was also a fellow Quaker and sponsored William's expedition from 1773-77 throughout the southeastern part of what is now the U.S. (It is likely that Fothergill received little in return for his sponsorship given that when Bartram returned, the Revolutionary War was underway.)
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In 1791 William Bartram published his classic book Travels..., the chief cause of his fame, which by the end of the 18th century had been reprinted in London and Dublin, and translated into German, French and Dutch. Says the Dictionary of American Biography: "The literary influence of Bartram's Travels would furnish meat for a dissertation." "When William Bartram published his Travels in 1791, he became the first American nature essayist." [Lyons, p. 24].
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Writes Hans Huth [Link] of Crevecoeur [see below] and William Bartram: "...both men were lovers of nature. Their descriptions of the natural landscape and its effect on their emotions were sound beginnings in the development of nature interpretation and set an example for future naturalists.... One of the feelings that Crevecoeur was instrumental in passing on to those who lived in his time or immediately after him was the great happiness that he always felt when in the woods." [p. 22 of Bison ed.]
Adds Nash: "What made William Bartram....rejoice in the wilderness was its sublimity. His descriptions mark the first extensive use of that term in American letters. Instances appear on almost every page.... Bartram ascribed to the essentials of Romantic primitivism." And yet, there "were few...Bartrams in the colonies. Most of their contemporaries shared the pioneer aversion to wilderness.... The new attitude coexisted with, rather than replaced, the old." [Nash pp. 54-5].
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Travels was notable in many respects - not least for its sympathetic portrayal of the Native Americans that Bartram met along the way. It also had a demonstrable influence on the works of the Romantic poets, such Coleridge, Wordsworth and Chateaubriand, whose impact is discussed in the Overview. His detailed yet literary descriptions of the land over which he journeyed, many of which were discounted as fantastical before the area became better known, were his greatest legacy and influence on the subsequent forerunners of the EC movement.
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Thomas J. Lyon credits St. John de Crevecoeur's [Link] Letters from an American Farmer (1782) and Thomas Jefferson's [Link] Notes on the State of Virginia (1801 ed., originally published 1785) as "the first literarily coherent works based in some significant portion on nature experience or natural history...," describing the former as "much the more consciously literary work of the two." [p. 33]. Jefferson's biggest accomplishment in Notes is refuting the contention of the great naturalist the Comte de Buffon that North America's wildlife (including aboriginal) was smaller and weaker than European counterparts. As noted, Jefferson was a friend of John Bartram, and cites his work, as well as Peter Kalm's, in his arguments.
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The perception that America's qualities were inferior to those of Europe extended beyond animals to the landscape as well. Western Europe's natural features were largely shaped by hundreds of generations of human "civilization" - there was virtually no "wilderness" remaining. This overarching hand of human "civilization" was seen as superior to the untrammeled wildness of most of the American continent. Thomas Cole, the first great American landscape painter and founder of the Hudson River School of Art was also a writer whose Essay on American Scenery (1836 - see Catalogue) directly addressed this conflict. Cole, who was born and raised in England, writes that the American landscape "is a subject that to every American ought to be of surpassing interest...it is his own land; its beauty, its magnificence, its sublimity - are his; and how undeserving of such a birthright, if he can turn towards it an unobserving eye, an unaffected heart!"
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...I would have it remembered that nature has shed over this land beauty and magnificence, and although the character of its scenery may differ from the old world's, yet inferiority must not therefore be inferred... [T]he most distinctive, and perhaps the most impressive, characteristic of American scenery is its wildness.... Yet I cannot but express my sorrow that the beauty of such landscapes are quickly passing away - the ravages of the axe are daily increasing - the most noble scenes are made desolate, and oftentimes with a wantonness and barbarism scarcely credible in a civilized nation.
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Parenthetically, Cole's essay was printed in the Jan 1836 issue of American Monthly Magazine, which coincidentally was founded and edited by Henry William Herbert, aka Frank Forester, who had an important impact on the public perception of hunting and fishing in particular, an important development in the continuing evolution of the EC movement. More on Herbert below.
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Birds have had a disproportionate (relative to other flora and fauna) representation in the realm of nature writing generally and environmental appreciation and conservation specifically. There are thousands (probably hundreds of thousands) of bird books, including notable works by writers and artists such as Alexander Wilson, who is considered by many to be the father of American ornithology, and was instructed and inspired by William Bartram; Marc Catesby, who like John Bartram was sponsored by Collison (and is not currently represented in the Collection); Thomas Nutall, also mentored by William Bartram; Louis Agassiz-Fuertes; Elliott Coues; Mabel Osgood Wright; Bradford Torrey; and Frank Chapman, among countless others. Some of the most important figures in the development of the EC movement were particularly inspired by birds, such as Theodore Roosevelt and John Burroughs. However, certainly the most famous bird book of all is Birds of America and the accompanying Ornithological Biographies by John James Audubon [Link].
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As described in the Catalogue, Birds of America was a great success in Audubon's time and an original copy of it remains at the time of this writing the third most expensive non-religious rare book sale ever (behind a Magna Carta and DaVinci's Codex). [Sadly, the copy in the Collection is not an original, it is from the seventh octavo edition, the last made with the original plates before they were lost in a fire].
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Audubon's name in America is synonymous with birds - there are hundreds Audubon Society chapters and many towns, schools, parks, roads, institutions, etc. bearing his name. The accompanying Ornithological Biographies, (written with the substantial input of William MacGillvary [Link] - see the Humboldt section below) while generally fact-laden, occasionally allow Audubon to voice his enthusiasm for birds and their environments.
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Audubon was primarily an artist and writer with a singular focus on birds (although he also published a four-volume work on mammals), but he did have some words to say on principles of conservation. Nash (p. 97) quotes him in the following passage "as he heard 'the din of hammers and machinery' and saw 'the woods...fast disappearing under the axe,' Audubon put restraint aside. 'The greedy mills,' he concluded, 'told the sad tale, that in a century the noble forests.... should exist no more.'"
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Incidentally, Audubon was not a good guy - he was an avowed racist and slave-owner and has been accused of plagiarism and scientific fraud [see Sources]. The National Audubon Society in March 2023 voted to continue using his name "after a yearlong process that included input from hundreds of its members, volunteers and donors" [NYT article "Audubon Society Keeps Name Despite Slavery Ties, Dividing Birders," 3/15/23]. Some chapters of the Society have changed their names, however.
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The first ornithological club in the U.S. was actually not the Audubon Society. It was - and still is - the Nuttall Ornithological Club, started in 1873 by William Brewster [Link] and named after Thomas Nuttall [Link]. The American Ornithological Union was an outgrowth of the Nuttall Club. Nuttall was primarily a botanist, although he did publish and ornithological manual which was the standard for years. He also sent samples from his travels to Audubon, who used them as models for Birds.
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Nuttall was an intrepid explorer and collector, braving all manner of hardship in pursuit of his passion for nature and wilderness. About him Lyon writes that "he had an aesthetic sense for natural history much resembling [Alexander] Wilson's, and a similar dedication, but in the course of a long career was able to amass far greater scientific knowledge. Indeed, he may have been the most knowledgeable of the all-purpose naturalists of the early period in this country. He was also a writer who conveyed perhaps more adequately than anyone before him...with more scientific precision, the complexity of the relationships between species and their habitats." (p. 43).
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Nuttall was also a nut, seemingly oblivious to anything save his work. "Nuttall had gained the respect of fellow botanists, but to the public at large, he had also become a prototype of the absent-minded professor, the naturalist as nerd" per an article about him in Bird Observer by John R. Nelson (link in Catalogue). He used his rifle as a seed holder, seems to have gotten lost a lot, and endured all manner of privations in pursuit of knowledge.
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The Collection contains Nuttall's Genera of North American Plants (1818) and Travels into the Arkansa Territory (1821) - for more on these and Nuttall generally, please see the Catalogue entry. About Travels, Lyon writes that it has a "Garden-of-Eden quality," reflecting Nuttall's love and passion for the natural environment.
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An interesting Philadelphian who was influential on many of his peers but is not represented in the Collection given the nature of his writings is Benjamin Smith Barton. Barton's nephew William published Flora of North America (1821-3) in the Collection. BS Barton was also Thomas Nuttall's mentor (see below). BSB was a botanist, naturalist and physician who was one of the first professors of natural history in the US. He built the largest collection of botanical specimens in the country and wrote the first American textbook on botany in 1803. William Bartram often assisted him in his efforts, and BSB instructed Meriweather Lewis on botanical collecting before his expedition with William Clark.
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The father of American ornithology, according to many, was Alexander Wilson [Link], whose nine-volume color plate work entitled American Ornithology; or, the Natural History of the Birds of the United States, was published between 1808-1814. The books themselves are considered to be the first significant American color plate books - the first edition copy in the Collection is breathtaking. Wilson died in 1813 - his friend George Ord, who himself published the first systematic zoology of America by an American, finished the last two volumes. See the Catalogue entry for more on Wilson's masterwork.
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Another passionate lover of wilderness was the famed historian, Francis Parkman [Link]. Parkman, like Thoreau and George Catlin, was among the first to call for meaningful land protection by the government. (See the Catlin Catalogue entry (1941) for a description of his farsighted proposals). Parkman was part of a group, which included Thomas Higginson [Link], Frederick Law Olmstead [Link] and Oliver Wendell Holmes [Link], which pushed for the creation of Massachusetts Preserves, funded with private trusts.
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Parkman is among the preeminent American nationalist historians, known especially for this work and his seven-volume work on the colonial era. Despite life-long ill health he was a nature lover - and specifically a wilderness lover. At age 23 he traveled through the West - The Oregon Trail (1892 edition, originally published 1849) is a first-person account of that trip, centered on a three-week buffalo hunt with the Oglala Sioux. He bemoaned the loss of wilderness in his graduation speech at Harvard and remained a voice against such degradation for his entire life - in fact he characterized the overarching theme of his collective historical works as the history of the American forests.
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Parkman closes the preface to the Collection's 1892 edition of The Oregon Trail, illustrated by Frederick Remington [Link]: "The Wild West is tamed and its savage charms have withered. If this book can help to keep their memory alive, it will have done its part. It has found a powerful helper in the pencil of Mr. Remington, whose pictures are as full of truth as of spirit, for they are the work of one who knew the prairies and the mountains before irresistible commonplace had subdued them." (p. ix). In fact, in a prior edition published in 1873, Parkman had added to his Preface a longer lament for the loss of wilderness.
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George Catlin [Link] was an artist, author and promoter who developed a passion for documenting the Native Americans who were rapidly and brutally being displaced before the westward expansion of the US. He spent eight years traveling amongst the first peoples, emerging with over 500 oil paintings, over half of which were portraits. He showed these paintings in salon-style shows in the East, while desperately trying to get Congress to buy the collection for posterity. Failing, he moved his show to Europe, where he published Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians (1841). Eventually, an industrialist bought and stored the collection - it was finally donated to the Smithsonian by Harrison's widow, seven years after Catlin's death. Today, according to the Smithsonian, they are "appreciated for both their historical and anthropological significance and their aesthetic value...a great cultural resource...." [americanexperience.si.edu]
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Catlin is, if not polarizing, at least controversial. He was of the time in his acceptance of the concept of "savage" vs. "civilized" races; and is accused of being exploitative. I will state categorically that having spent a casual hour reading through the books, this is quite unfair, a case of hindsight being 20/20 and the willful ignoring of historical context. Catlin is extraordinarily sympathetic to the plight of the native people, which he attributes entirely to the evils of white expansion. He spends pages railing against governmental policy, fur trappers, market hunters, traders and the like. He blames the decline in the native civilizations on disease, whiskey, the bayonet, and an admirable native culture and ethic which was completely at odds with the mores and morals (or lack thereof) of white civilization. He calls the Native American in his or her native state an "honest, hospitable, faithful, brave, warlike, cruel, revengeful, restless, - yet honourable, contemplative and religious being." (p. 8). He adds that the "very use of the word savage, as it is applied in its general sense, I am inclined to believe is an abuse of the word, and the people to whom it is applied." (p. 9)
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"Many are the rudenesses and wilds in Nature's works, which are destined to fall before the deadly axe and desolating hands of cultivating man; and so amongst her ranks of living, of beast and human, we often find [that]...to which our admiration clings; and even in the overwhelming march of civilized improvements and refinements do we love to cherish their existence, and lend our efforts to preserve them in their primitive rudeness. Such of Nature's works are always worthy of our preservation and protection; and the further we become separated...from that pristine wildness and beauty, the more pleasure does the mind of enlightened man feel in recurring to these scenes, when he can have them preserved for his eyes and his mind to dwell upon.... Nature has no where [sic] presented more beautiful and lovely scenes, than those of the vast prairies of the West...." (p. 260)
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Catlin writes movingly (albeit somewhat floridly) of the wanton slaughter of the bison, largely for robes which "add a new and useless article to the fashionable world's luxuries." He makes insightful ecological comments about the coming demise of the bison on the attendant wolf population. He concludes: "It is a melancholy...to contemplate [the bison] so rapidly wasting from the world, drawing the irresistible conclusion too, which one must do, that its species is soon to be extinguished, and with it the peace and happiness (if not the actual existence) of the tribes of Indians who are joint tenants with them, in the occupancy of these vast and idle plains."
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And what a splendid contemplation too, when one (who has travelled these realms, and can duly appreciate them) imagines them as they might in future be seen, (by some great protecting policy of government) preserved in their pristine beauty and wildness, in a magnificent park, where the world could see for ages to come, the native Indian...amid the fleeting herds of elks and buffaloes. What a beautiful and thrilling America to preserve and hold up to the view of her refined citizens and the world, in future ages! A nation's Park, containing man and beast, in all the wild and freshness of their nature's beauty.
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I would ask no other monument to my memory, nor any other enrolment of my name amongst the famous dead, than the reputation for having been the founder of such an institution. (pp. 261-2)
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As noted above, to a degree Catlin was of his time. In Europe, for example, his exhibition of paintings also included Native Americans performing in a show akin to Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West shows. But from this lay person's perspective, whilst his pleas were not necessarily hugely influential at the time, he was prescient, and in many of the most important ways, way ahead.​​​
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There are scholars who point to George B. Emerson's [Link] Report on the Trees and Shrubs...of Massachusetts (1846), rather than Marsh's Man and Nature (1864) as the true beginning of the EC movement. Emerson was alarmed at the felling of Massachusetts' forests as the state's population grew and the need for wood for fuel, building materials, manufacturing, etc. resulted in destruction of resources and the need to import wood from neighboring states. "A few generations ago, an almost unbroken forest covered the continent.... Now, those old woods are every where [sic] falling. The axe has made, and is making, wanton and terrible havoc. The cunning foresight of the Yankee seems to desert him when he takes the axe in hand." [p.3].
Emerson opens the book with a call for concerted central action, "...the preservation and improvement of the forests, in their highest degree, are above private effort, require joint action, and must be effected on a large scale, on a system wisely begun and long continued, by the men of one generation for those of the next.... [I]t is wise in a government not acting merely for the present but extending its forethought generously onwards, making its knowledge and wisdom an invested capital for future use, and desiring to do for coming generations, what they, when looking back, shall wish it had been done...." [p.1]. Finally, in discussing the uses of the forest, Emerson anticipates Marsh's central argument: "Forests create or gradually but constantly improve a soil.... An unprotected hill soon loses its soil." [p.5], although he does not extend the argument to the effect of such erosion on water sources.
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1846 also saw the original publication of William Elliott's [Link] Carolina Sports by Land and Water. (The copy in the Collection is the first English edition, published 1867). The Library of Congress describes the book as "an early example of the hunter-as-conservationist, a phenomenon which became increasingly important for conservation." [https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amrvhtml/cnchron1.html]. Elliott writes: "Thus thinking of the value of amusement in general, and of hunting in particular, I cannot but perceive with regret, that there are causes in operation which have destroyed, and are yet destroying, the game to that extent that, in another generation, this manly pastime will no longer be within our reach.... It is the wanton, the uncalled-for destruction of forests and of game, that I reprehend." [p. 283].
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William Herbert [Link] - writing under the name Frank Forester [Link], was a popular and influential writer about sporting (i.e. hunting and fishing) pursuits for Spirit of the Times, an early sporting magazine. While not conservationist-minded in the same sense as Elliott, he is credited with doing as much as anyone to change the bias of early Americans against hunting and fishing, which had been the purview of subsistence and market hunters. Writes Huth: "Gradually it was recognized that Herbert's writings stimulated in his readers a very strong desire for the life of the hunter and fisherman and the public acquired an understanding of what it really meant to be active in field sports. After young Americans of all classes began to learn the rules of fair play and gentlemanly behavior in outdoor sports, public opinion did an about-face and the hunter came to be looked upon as a skilled woodsman, truly representative of his country...." [1990 Bison ed., p. 56].
Frank Forester's Field Sports (1849) - the Collection contains a second printing previously owned by Herbert's bibliographer - went through more than twenty printings according to Huth, who describes Herbert as "the father of American woodcraft literature."
The phenomena of hunter as conservationist really took off later in the 19th century and is discussed further in the chapter on the Progressive Era.
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In 1850, a most influential book by Susan Fenimore Cooper [Link] called Rural Hours was published - it was very popular, undergoing multiple editions and printings over the balance of the century, and both Thoreau and Darwin are known to have read it. Rural Hours chronicles the passage of time and seasons in upstate New York. The book has been described as an early environmental work, subtly but unmistakably pointing out the destructive impact of various practices on the landscape and fauna of the area and advocating for forest preservation. That the narrative techniques were subtly employed perhaps owes much to the fact that the author was a woman - in fact, Rural Hours is considered the first work of literary non-fiction by an American woman.
A particularly interesting fact is that, holding a first edition copy of the book in your hand, you cannot tell who wrote it - the author is never identified. Authorial credit is attributed to "A Lady" - the copywrite was issued to James Fenimore Cooper, the author's father.
Note that as of Aug. 2024, this was the first book in the Collection written by a woman. The next is a U.K.-published children's book published in 1872 by obscure British author named Bertha Wright. After that we have to wait until an 1892 work by the prominent ornithological author Harriet Mann Miller (writing as Olive Thorne Miller).
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During the early days of the American republic, the country had a bit of an inferiority complex regarding Europe, given its relative lack of culture and history (hence Jefferson's efforts to counter Buffon in Notes discussed above). In response, Americans began to turn to the country's nature in general and wilderness in particular as a superior differentiating factor. In the mid-19th-century a number of works were published illustrating the grandeur, sublimity and majesty of the American scene. An important example is The Home Book of the Picturesque (1852), [CREATE LINK] a large, attractive and ornate volume containing essays by the likes of Willam Cullen Bryant [Link], Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Susan Fenimore Cooper [Link] and Bayard Taylor, and 13 steel engravings of paintings by such artistic luminaries as Frederick Church, Thomas Cole, Gignoux and A.B. Durand. In a prefatory note, publisher George Putnam describes the book as an "experiment" that he hoped would represent an advance in the art of book making in America.
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[The pinnacle of this model of book is the massive two-volume work Picturesque America (1872-4) [Link], edited by Bryant and Oliver B. Bunce. See the relevant Catalogue entry for further details regarding the work and the copy in the Collection].
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ALEXANDER von HUMBOLDT [Link]
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Alexander von Humboldt [Link], the author of Travels and Researches, Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, and Cosmos (among many other works) was a man of extraordinary talents. In researching him, I've never seen such a string of superlatives. The title of Andrea Wulf's acclaimed biography, The Invention of Nature, is indicative of his accomplishments and stature - she describes him as, in his time, "the nexus of the scientific world." [Sources: Wulf p. 3]. Thomas Jefferson, who Humboldt met on a side trip to the U.S. on his way home from New Spain, called him "the most scientific man of the age." He inspired Thoreau, Muir, Marsh and Haeckel and countless others, to say nothing of informing every student for decades.
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Humboldt posited very early that human action could have a long-term negative impact on the environment. In fact, he was the first person to suggest human impact on climate. And he was no dilettante - during his trip to Central and South America, he and his party set the European record for highest known ascent while climbing Chimborazo, an inactive volcano in the Andes (they reached 19,400 feet, about 1,000 feet below the summit). He has more species named after him than any other human being.
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And I have to say, having read his biography, he would be very high on my list of historical persons who I would choose to meet, if given the choice to meet only one.
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I've excerpted an unusually lengthy portion of a blog from the Smithsonian Museum as it is otherwise difficult to do justice to his impact (Sources: Smithsonian):
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…[B]etween the 1820s and 1850s Alexander von Humboldt was one of the most widely admired public figures in the world…. [He] theorized the spreading of the continental landmasses through plate tectonics, mapped the distribution of plants on three continents and charted the way air and water move to create bands of climate at different latitudes and altitudes. He tracked what became known as the Humboldt Current in the Pacific Ocean and created what he called isotherms to chart mean temperatures around the globe. He observed the relationship between deforestation and changes in local climate, located the magnetic equator and found in the geological strata fossil remains of both plants and animals that he understood to be precursors to modern life forms, acknowledging extinction before many others…. [He] visited the United States for six weeks in 1804…. It was perhaps the most consequential visit by a European traveler in the young nation's history, one that helped to shape an emerging American identity grounded in the natural world…. Goethe proclaimed that he learned more from an hour in Humboldt's company than he did spending eight days reading other books.... He produced separate monographs devoted to astronomy, botany, geology, mineralogy and zoology.... He developed a revolutionary theory that all aspects of the planet, from the outer atmosphere to the bottom of the oceans, were interconnected, a theory he called the unity of nature. It is hard to overstate how radical an idea this was in its day…. His embrace of nature as an impressive attribute symbolic of cultural prowess encouraged the development of a wilderness aesthetic in the U.S…. By the 1820s Humboldt’s words and images became an integral part of the American school curriculum, and lengthy excerpts from his books appeared frequently in the leading literary and scientific journals…. During the 19th century, towns, counties and streets across the U.S. bore his name; in the decade following his death, statues were erected in parks across the country. When the Nevada Territory petitioned for statehood in 1864, Humboldt was one of the options for the new state’s name. The celebrations in his honor continued in the U.S. until the early 20th century… With the rise of the environmental and conservation movements of the 20th century, Humboldt’s ideas have gained renewed traction and gradually his name has become re-associated with those once radical ideas of planetary interconnectedness and the emergence of climate science in this era….
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Humboldt was born in Berlin of a wealthy family. Following his education, he became a mine engineer and inspector in Prussia, based in Jena where his closest friend was Goethe. Humboldt longed to travel and explore but the Napoleonic Wars were a major obstacle, both politically and practically. He finally got permission from Spain to travel through its American colonies, provided he funded the voyage himself and sent back flora and fauna samples. Spain was notorious for not allowing foreigners into its territories, and the king's decision to grant the passport to Humboldt surprised even the Spanish. [Wulf p. 44]​
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Over the course of five years, Humboldt and his companion, botanist Aime Bonpland, traveled to and through Venezuela nearly to the Amazon, up to Cuba, back to Columbia then overland along the Andes through what is now Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, then up to New Spain (now Mexico and part of the southwestern U.S.). They endured extraordinary hardships but always Humboldt was measuring, observing, notating - he amassed 4,000 pages of closely written notes throughout the journey.
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Upon returning to Europe, Humboldt published over many years dozens of books, some of which were scientific monographs and others more general works. The key to his philosophy and lasting influence was his ability to see nature as a whole - as a system and a beautiful one at that. He had an extraordinary memory - he could see a leaf on a tree in South America and relate it to one he had seen years earlier in Europe. Based on that type of observation, he was the first to posit that Africa and South America must have once been joined together, decades before plate tectonics became known.
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Humboldt knew a lot about much, but he did not know everything - when he did not know about something, he tapped his network of scientific friends. Humboldt is known to have written 50,000 letters, and received twice that. He was a pioneer in establishing a scientific network which transcended political borders and ideologies.
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In 1829, Humboldt did an exploratory trip in Russia, seeking among other things to obtain observations and data to compare and confirm that obtained on his American trip and elsewhere. His two subsequent books on the trip, published in 1821 and 1843, included discussions on deforestation and other long-term environmental changes caused by mankind. Per Wulf, his "views were so new and different from what was generally believed at the time that even his translator questioned his arguments. The translator added a footnote in the German edition which stated that the influence of deforestation as presented by Humboldt was 'questionable.'" [Wulf p. 213]
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Humboldt's four most influential works were Political Essay of New Spain (1811), Views of Nature (1808), Personal Narrative (1814-31) and Cosmos (1845-62). The Collection contains copies of all save Views. The publishing history of his works is exceptionally muddled, in that some books were published initially in German, others in French, some editions and translations were authorized and others not. Humboldt himself did not know what was published when and in what language [Wulf p. 431].
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Personal Narrative was hugely impactful on many subsequent giants of the environmental conservation movement - Muir began his walk to South America inspired by Humboldt. Darwin's Beagle voyage was a direct result of reading Humboldt, whom he idolized, and in fact Darwin's journal has been described as being a "sort of continual intellectual dialogue with Humboldt." [John van Wyhe].
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In his biography of Muir, Donald Worster writes of Darwin, artist Frederick Church and many others: "They came because, like Muir, they had read Alexander von Humboldt's multivolume work Personal Narrative.... Humboldt inspired a generation or two to come and experience the superhuman force of the greatest expanse of forest on earth...." [Worster p. 118-119]
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From Darwin Online Introduction by Gordon Chancellor [see Sources]:
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In the 1840s Darwin asked his best friend Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817-1911) to tell Humboldt that his (Darwin's) 'whole course of life' was due to having 'read & re-read as a Youth' Humboldt's Personal narrative (Correspondence, vol. 3: 140)....In 1865 Darwin wrote to Wallace "I have always thought that Journals of this nature [i.e. travel books] do considerable good by advancing the taste for Natural history; I know in my own case that nothing ever stimulated my zeal so much as reading Humboldt's Personal Narrative".
....I have always looked at him as, in fact, the founder of the geographical distribution of organisms. (More Letters 2: 26)
Ironically Darwin's Origin of Species appeared in the same year as Humboldt's death (1859) and from that time onwards Darwin has rather eclipsed Humboldt as the great South American traveller scientist, at least in the Anglophone world. In truth both men were giants of scientific exploration whose works were fundamental contributions to our understanding of the natural world.
There is no better proof of how Darwin treasured his Personal narrative to the end of his life than his ink note written inside the back cover of volume 3 of his own copy: "July 6 1881 to p. 417 – April 3rd 1882 finished". So the book given to Darwin by Henslow half a century before must have been one of the last Darwin ever read, or in this case re-read. He was too ill in the following weeks to do much else. Darwin died on 19 April 1882.
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Personal Narrative was published in English, translated by Helen Maria Williams, over a period from 1814-1825. The copy in the Collection is a later condensed edition, published in NY in 1838, edited and with additional analysis provided by William MacGillivray [Link], a prominent Scottish natural historian who coincidentally was an assistant professor of Natural History at the University of Edinburgh while Darwin was attending that school (from 1825-1827). Per Darwin's biographer Browne, "Darwin...claimed he learned much more from talking with the museum's curator, William MacGillivray, a rough-hewn Scot who later became professor of natural history at Aberdeen University...." [Browne, Vol 1., p. 72]. MacGillivray was also friends with Audubon and helped write substantial portions of his Ornithological Biographies.
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Writing about Political Essay of New Spain, The University of Chicago calls Humboldt "the most celebrated modern chronicler of North and South America and the Caribbean" and Political Essay "the first modern regional economic and political geography....The work canvases natural-scientific and cultural-scientific objects alike, combining the results of fieldwork with archival research and expert testimony. To show how people, plants, animals, goods, and ideas moved across the globe, Humboldt wrote in a variety of styles, bending and reshaping familiar writerly conventions to keep readers attentive to new inputs. Above all, he wanted his readers to be open-minded when confronted with cultural and other differences in the Americas. Fueled by his comparative global perspective on politics, economics, and science, he used his writing to support Latin American independence and condemn slavery and other forms of colonial exploitation. It is these voluminous and innovative writings on the New World that made Humboldt the undisputed father of modern geography, early American studies, transatlantic cultural history, and environmental studies." [Sources: uchicago.edu]
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Political Essay was extraordinarily broad in scope, surveying not just geography and natural history but, as its title suggests, the poeple, politics, trade, commerce, etc. of the region. "No one in Europe or North America knew more about South America than Humboldt - he had become the authority on the subject....[Political Essay] was "so detailed and overwhelmingly meticulous that the English translator wrote in the preface to the English edition that the book tended to 'fatigue the attention of the reader'. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Humboldt chose another translator for his later publications." [Wulf pp. 152-3].
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During the last two decades of his life, Humboldt worked on what can only be described as a most audacious project, essentially an attempt to synthesize all of the extant scientific knowledge about the natural world. Cosmos ultimately encompassed five volumes published over 17 years, the last posthumously. In it, Humboldt posited a fundamental harmony and unification of nature that encompassed the perceiver - going in the opposite direction of the trend towards an atomistic and reductionist approach to science that began around the same time. Cosmos contains phrases like "wonderful web of organic life", and nature was "animated by one breath - from pole to pole, one life is poured on rocks, plants, animals, and even into the swelling breast of man." [Quoted in Wulf p. 246]. But in the entire book he never once mentioned any sort of god, an omission much criticized in certain quarters at the time.
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Humboldt used an army of helpers and correspondents to help create Cosmos, which became his most influential book. Upon publication of the first volume in 1845 "[t]he world was electrified.... In the history of publishing, the book's popularity was 'epoch making,' Humboldt's German publisher announced. He had never seen so many orders.... Students read Cosmos, as did scientists, artists and politicians." [Wulf p. 246]. The second volume, published in the 1847, was a history of scientific thought throughout human history. Upon publication "People fought 'real battles' for copies.... Bribes were offered and parcels of books destined for booksellers in St. Petersburg and London were interrupted and diverted by agents intent on supplying their desperate customers in Hamburg and Vienna." [Wulf p. 147].
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Per Wulf, the last three volumes of Cosmos were of a more specialized scientific nature and never appealed to the general public as did the first two volumes.
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The version of Cosmos in the Collection was published by Henry G. Bohn in 1849 and consists of the first two volumes of the five that ultimately made up the entire work - it was one of three English-language editions that were published around the same time, of which the one by John Murray, translated by Elizabeth J.L. Sabine, might be considered the "authorized" edition. The translator of the Bohn edition, Elise Otte (E.C. Otte), a Danish woman of extraordinary scholarly achievements, writes in her introduction to Vol 1:
It would be scarcely right to conclude these remarks without a reference to the translations which have preceded mine. The translation, executed by Mrs. Sabine, is singularly accurate and elegant. The other translation is remarkable for the opposite qualities, and may therefore be passed over in silence. The present volumes differ from those of Mrs. Sabine in having all the foreign measures converted into corresponding English terms, in being published at considerably less than one third of the price [3S 6D for the first four, 5S for the last], and in being a translation of the entire work, for I have not conceived myself justified in omitting passages, sometimes amounting to pages, simply because they might be deemed slightly obnoxious to our national prejudices.
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Bohn was an interesting publisher, creating "Libraries" of standard works of particular types, ultimately totaling over 600 volumes. Cosmos was part of the Scientific Library - other Libraries included Standard, Classical, Illustrated, etc. The volumes were aimed at the general readership, being somewhat cheaper and more accessible than many others.
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Throughout his life, Humboldt was outspoken in his condemnation of slavery and colonialism. "He criticized unjust land distribution, monocultures, violence against tribal groups and indigenous work conditions." [Wulf p. 105]. He was the first to link colonialism with environmental degradation, based on the impacts of monoculture, excessive irrigation and deforestation. Political Essay was a driving influence of revolutionary Simon Bolivar, liberator of much of the continent, who had met and become close friends with Humboldt during and after the latter's travels. Humboldt continues to be better known in South America than elsewhere.
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Ten years after Humboldt died, the world celebrated the centennial of his birth with parties in Europe, Africa, Australia, and North and South America. In Moscow he was celebrated as "Shakespeare of the sciences." In Egypt there were fireworks. Per Wulf: "The greatest commemorations were in the United States, where from San Francisco to Philadelphia, and from Chicago to Charleston, the nation saw street parades, sumptuous dinners and concerts. In Cleveland some 8,000 people took to the streets and in Syracuse another 15,000 joined a march that was more than a mile long. President Ulysses Grant attended the Humboldt celebrations in Pittsburgh together with 10,000 revelers.... In New York City...entire houses had vanished behind huge posters bearing Humboldt's face.... 25,000 onlookers had assembled in Central Park to listen to speeches...as darkness settled, a torchlight procession of 15,000 people set out...." [Wulf p. 6]. How awesome is that, for a scientist!
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Humboldt is not as well known outside of Central and South America today - although Wulf's excellent and highly recommended biography has gone some way towards remedying that. Part of the reason may be because during the first and second world wars, all things German became persona non grata. For example, at that time the British royal family changed its name to 'Windsor' from 'Saxe-Coburg and Gotha'. "In Cleveland, where fifty years earlier thousands had marched through the streets in celebration of Humboldt's centennial, German books were burned in a huge public bonfire. In Cincinnati all German publications were removed from the shelves of the public library and 'Humboldt Street' was renamed 'Taft Street'. Both world wars...cast long shadows, and neither Britain nor America were places for the celebration of a great German mind any more." [Wulf pp. 335-6]
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Nevertheless, Humboldt's insights and influence continue to underpin the entire EC movement. The most influential thinkers (Thoreau, Darwin, George Perkins Marsh and Muir) for decades after studied him and, in many cases, idolized him. Writes David Lowenthal in his autobiography of Marsh: "Thoreau in fact had much in common with Marsh. Both shared their mutual hero Humboldt's passion for empirical natural history." [p. 419}
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He was a man amongst men. He was also almost certainly gay, which is kind of neat.
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CONCLUSION
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Overall, the period before the mid-19th century was largely about exploration and understanding of the environment, with a burgeoning movement towards appreciation - but the vast majority still viewed wilderness as a thing to be feared and the environment as something meant solely for humankind's unfettered use. A handful of visionaries, such as Francis Parkman, Susan Cooper, George Emerson and Alexander von Humboldt, began to broach the idea that humans could have a long-term negative impact on the environment, and that protection might be warranted.
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The philosophy of the Romantic period and particularly Transcendentalism served as an important pivot point in the movement towards appreciation of nature both for its own sake and for the intrinsic and psychic value it offers. In terms of impact on nature writing, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were the apotheosis of that movement in America and are the subject of the next chapter.
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