American Women Afield: Writings by Pioneering Women NaturalistsMarcia Bonta Texas A&M University Press, 1995 - 248 pages Armed with hand lenses and opera glasses, traveling on foot, by buggy, or model T, they explored thousands of miles of deserts, forests, beaches, and jungles. They were pioneering women naturalists who observed, studied, and experimented, then returned to write up their findings. What resulted were exquisitely written and scientifically accurate accounts of their explorations into natural science--a field long dominated by men. Marcia Myers Bonta has collected the most charming and sensitive writings of twenty-five women naturalists of the late nineteenth through early twentieth centuries and supplemented them with well-researched biographical profiles. From Susan Fenimore Cooper's early warnings about the profligate use of natural resources to Mary Treat's tenacious defense of her scientific discoveries, from Alice Eastwood's defiance of convention and Caroline Dormon's, Lucy Braun's, and Rachel Carson's impassioned pleas to save the earth, American Women Afield catalogs the determination and devotion of these early scientists and acknowledges their invaluable contributions to ornithology, entomology, botany, agrostology, and ecology. Each excerpt in this book reveals the important role these women played not only as writers but as popularizers of nature study at a time when very little literature on this subject was available to the general public. Whether scientist or generalist, the reader will discover insights into their methods of field work as they tame wasps, camp out in jungles, climb unnamed mountaintops, or sit patiently in the woods for hours. Written as a companion book to Bonta's earlier published Women in the Field: America's Pioneering Women Naturalists, American Women Afield adds an additional dimension to female scientific history by presenting the authors' own words. Luckily for the reader, Bonta has scoured libraries, museums, and private collections to uncover letters, out-of-print journal articles, field notes, and selected book chapters from the recesses of academia. Each selection is unique in style, tone, and subject and clearly shows not only the authors' love of nature but their desire to communicate that love to others. American Women Afield is a charming, informative, and revealing account of pioneering women--mentors whose lives have been forgotten for far too long. |
From inside the book
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... a positive contribution to knowledge . Several expressed their disgust with so- ciety's expectations of proper womanly behavior and interests . They realized they were different from most women and were proud xii Preface.
... interest- ing — Jane Colden , Maria Martin , Annie Montague Alexander , and Kate Furbish — did not write skillfully for the general public about their work . Others who did — for instance , Katharine Dooris Sharp and Ruth Harris Thomas ...
... interest was birds , insects , plants , or mammals . A love of nature characterized these women naturalists . But it is their desire to communicate that love to others that not only inter- ests their readers in the natural world around ...
... interest and greed . The book also reveals her wide interest in classi- cal subjects and natural history , with anecdotes from the ornithological observations of John James Audubon and Alexander Wilson , frequent mention of the ...
... interest which can only belong to the graces of life and to the desolation of death . We raise our eyes , and we see collected in one company vigorous trunks , the oak , the ash , the pine , firm in the strength of maturity ; by their ...
Contents
1 | |
Graceanna Lewis | 9 |
Mary Treat | 17 |
Martha Maxwell | 33 |
Annie Trumbull Slosson | 45 |
Katharine Dooris Sharp | 55 |
Althea Sherman | 62 |
Elizabeth Gifford Peckham | 75 |
Mary Sophie Young | 152 |
Edith Clements | 161 |
Edith Patch | 171 |
Ann Haven Morgan | 179 |
Margaret Morse Nice | 189 |
Nellie Harris Rau | 203 |
Amelia Laskey | 210 |
Caroline Dormon | 216 |
Alice Eastwood | 84 |
Florence Merriam Bailey | 95 |
Anna Botsford Comstock | 106 |
Cordelia Stanwood | 114 |
Agnes Chase | 126 |
Ynes Mexia | 136 |
E Lucy Braun | 223 |
Ruth Harris Thomas | 230 |
Rachel Carson | 236 |
Afterword | 244 |
247 | |
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Early American Nature Writers: A Biographical Encyclopedia Daniel Patterson No preview available - 2007 |
"Good Observers of Nature": American Women and the Scientific Study of the ... Tina Gianquitto No preview available - 2007 |