Book Review

At Home on This Earth: Two Centuries of U.S. Women's Nature Writing. Edited by Lorraine Anderson and Thomas S. Edwards. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 2002. Xi + 404 pp. Bibliography, index. Cloth $60.00; paper $30.00.

Throughout the nineteenth and well into the late twentieth century, a turf war raged between the sexes over the right to speak for nature. This conflict has been acknowledged by social historians, by historians of science, and certainly by biographers. But nowhere has that dispute been so meticulously documented as by the two fine, and very different, anthologies under review here. In Nature's Name, an anthology of women's writing and illustration from 1780 to 1930 edited by the University of Delaware's distinguished professor Barbara T. Gates, introduces over seventy British women—and one American—some well known, but most not, who have written and drawn in an effort to speak authentically for nature. Lorraine Anderson and Thomas S. Edwards's selections in At Home on This Earth follows a more traditional format to survey the work of fifty-one American women writers born between 1801 and 1974. Both anthologies include a wide variety of genres, including memoir, story, journal, sketch, oration, poem, illustration and essay. Taken together the two volumes provide unequaled representation of women's efforts on both sides of the pond to challenge the social constraints that blocked their self-realization, and to speak for nature. What chiefly distinguishes these collections is the role of science, and the way in which women have participated in it, practiced it, and been excluded from it in their efforts to interpret the nature of nature and their own identities.	1
Anderson, an independent feminist writer who previously edited Sisters of the Earth (1991), and Edwards, who co-edited Such News of the Day (2001), present many unfamiliar women writers for whom nature was an integral part of their daily existence. Well-known writers are represented here as well, often by selections that are not customarily reprinted. But the importance of this collection is the inclusion of new voices. The editors have enlarged the canon of nature writing far beyond the earlier anthologies of Marcia Myers Bonta (1991,1995), introducing feminist writers and ethnic women writers all in a splendid effort of recovery. The editors seem ambiguous, however, as to whether scientific nature writing is the same as literary nature writing, and whether science expands or compromises women's relational interpretations of nature.	2
Clearly women writers have worked under a different set of cultural constraints. Anderson's introduction extends the "home-based, relational tradition" of American women's nature writing, and expands the image of domesticity set forth in Vera Norwood's seminal work, Made From This Earth (1993). This perspective, however, risks misunderstanding domesticity as exclusively feminine, and tends to essentialize these writers by attributing their motivation to a "home-based" rationale that does not always appear in their writing. It is especially problematic in the work of those women who write from a scientific perspective.	3
Selections are arranged chronologically with head notes that provide contextual and biographical information. The publisher has, unfortunately, printed these notes in the smallest possible type face and has chosen a text font that squeezes the words to get more on a line, seriously reducing the book's readability.	4
There are no ambiguities about the role of science in Barbara Gates's anthology, which began as a companion text to her cultural study of the relationship of Victorian and Edwardian women to natural history and science, Kindred Nature (1998). Inevitably, In Nature's Name had to stand on its own and does so by thematically presenting the work of women who appear in the previous study as well as others. Such an arrangement underscores the varieties of natural history that women wrote, and the multiple genres (including parable and science-fairy tale) they used. Quite consciously Gates has chosen not to separate nature writing from nature literature, or environmental writing from environmental literature. The thematic arrangement also allows Gates to highlight certain commonalities over time, such as women's interest in the domestication of plants and animals, and their desire to educate and to popularize science.	5
The anthology is divided into seven topical sections, with some sections such as those on "Protecting," "Domesticating," "Appreciating," and a final one on "Amateurs or Professionals" further subdivided. Within each section, selections proceed more or less chronologically, but Gates's arrangement is deliberately non-chronological to encourage a "dialogue of texts" to emphasize that women were working within the same tradition at different times, and to give prominence to certain issues, movements, and interests. This arrangement might have posed difficulties for the non-specialist and student unfamiliar with the Victorian and Edwardian world, but Gates provides a splendid chronology that places each woman's work in the context of the major social, political, and scientific events of "the long nineteenth century." There is a brief introduction to the taxonomy of nature writing in general, then each section is introduced by a substantive topical essay. In addition there is a set of biographical sketches of each of the writers and artists for whom there is extant information, and a bibliography arranged to complement each section. The book is lushly illustrated since Gates includes the non-prose work of the women artists, gardeners, photographers, and scientific illustrators in her analysis.	6
Some sections are more lively than others, but readers will have their own favorites. The collection on "Protecting" includes vivid protests against vivisection and cruelty to animals. The section on "Domesticating" includes women concerned with raising animals and plants in homes and gardens as well as those who wrote practical "how-to" books and gardening advice. These diverse women who claimed the right to speak on behalf of nature were increasingly excluded from professional science as the century wore on. Nonetheless they persisted in their desire to study, protect, conserve, and represent nature. Although women's voices were constricted by the domineering male culture, in their varied efforts they nonetheless played a crucial part in the evolving discussion about the nature of the natural world.	7
Both anthologies will be invaluable in the classroom and as reference works. Together they insure there need be no further complaint about a lack of texts by women nature writers.	8
Linda Lear, the author of Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature (Henry Holt and Company, 1997), is working on an environmental biography of Beatrix Potter. She is Research Professor of Environmental History at George Washington University.

Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.