Romantic Naturalists, Early Environmentalists

About this book

Dewey W. Hall asserts that William Wordsworth and Ralph Waldo Emerson were transatlantic literary figures who were both influenced by the English naturalist Gilbert White. Hall examines evidence that as Romantic naturalists interested in meteorology, Wordsworth and Emerson engaged in proto-environmental activity that drew attention to the potential consequences of the locomotive's incursion into Windermere and Concord. He suggests that Wordsworth and Emerson shaped the early environmental movement through their work as poets-turned-naturalists, making a persuasive case for literature's importance to the rise of environmentalism.