Voices Of Nature

What would happen, I wondered, if I simply missed out the fifty per cent of the population whose voices have been credited with shaping this particular ‘cultural form’. If I coppiced the woodland, so to speak, and allowed the light to shine down to the forest floor and illuminate countless saplings now that a gap has opened in the canopy. . . There has, in recent years, been an explosion of writing about place, landscape and the natural world. But within this blossoming of interest, women’s voices have remained very much in the minority. For the very first time, this landmark anthology collects together the work of women, over the centuries and up to the present day, who have written about the natural world in Britain, Ireland and the outlying islands of our archipelago. Alongside the traditional forms of the travelogue, the walking guide, books on birds, plants and wildlife, Women on Nature embraces alternative modes of seeing and recording that turn the genre on its head. Katharine Norbury has sifted through the pages of women’s fiction, poetry, household planners, gardening diaries and recipe books to show the multitude of ways in which they have observed the natural world about them, from the fourteenth-century writing of the anchorite Julian of Norwich to the seventeenth-century travel journal of Celia Fiennes; from the keen observations of Emily Brontë to a host of brilliant contemporary voices. Women on Nature presents a groundbreaking vision of the natural world which, in addition to being a rich and scintillating anthology that shines a light on many unjustly overlooked writers, is of unique importance in terms of women’s history and the history of writing about nature.

Essays addressing relatively unknown or unexamined speeches delivered by famous or influential environmental figures. The written works of nature’s leading advocates—from Charles Sumner and John Muir to Rachel Carson and President Jimmy Carter, to name a few—have been the subject of many texts, but their speeches remain relatively unknown or unexamined. Green Voices aims to redress this situation. After all, when it comes to the leaders, heroes, and activists of the environmental movement, their speeches formed part of the fertile earth from which uniquely American environmental expectations, assumptions, and norms germinated and grew. Despite having in common a definitively rhetorical focus, the contributions in this book reflect a variety of methods and approaches. Some concentrate on a single speaker and a single speech. Others look at several speeches. Some are historical in orientation, while others are more theoretical. In other words, this collection examines the broad sweep of US environmental history from the perspective of our most famous and influential environmental figures.

Since 1968, Bernie Krause has traveled the world recording the sounds of remote landscapes, endangered habitats, and rare animal species. Through his organization, Wild Sanctuary, he has collected the soundscapes of more than 2,000 different habitat types, marine and terrestrial. With powerful illustrations and compelling stories, Krause provides a manifesto for the appreciation and protection of natural soundscapes. In his previous book, The Great Animal Orchestra, Krause drew readers’ attention to what Jane Goodall described as “the harmonies of nature . . . [that are being] one by one by one, snuffed out by human actions.” He now explains that the secrets hidden in the natural world’s shrinking sonic environment must be preserved, not only for our scientific understanding, but for our cultural heritage and humanity’s physical and spiritual welfare. Krause’s narrative—supplemented by exclusive access to field recordings from the wild—draws on a compelling range of personal anecdotes, histories, and examples to document his early exploration of this field and to lay the groundwork for future generations.

The author here argues that the traditions of Pope and Goldsmith are continued in the present day by the likes of R.S. Thomas, George Mackay Brown, and others work in an 'anti-pastoralist' tradition of Crabbe and Clare. A chapter examining the attitudes towards the environment of sixteen contemporary poets concludes a lively ecological introduction to modern poetry.