RACHEL CARSON
Rachel Carson (1907-1964) was born in Springdale, Pennsylvania, about 18 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. Her home, known as the Rachel Carson Homestead, is on the National Register of Historic Places and is open for public and private tours. How did this open to a quiet studious young woman, daughter of an insurance salesman and a mother who inspired her with a love of nature? Although born and raised hundreds of miles inland, Carson early became fascinated with the ocean. She graduated from the Pennsylvania College for Women (A.B., 1929), then Johns Hopkins University (A.M., 1932), and did further graduate study a the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. She considered herself a marine biologist, encompassing in her career zoology, general aquatic biology, and science writing. Her love of writing began as a child and became remarkably honed during a lifetime of productive work, winning fellowships and awards throughout her life, including the National Book Award in 1952.
Everything she wrote is in print. She is considered one of the most influential writers on ecology, public policy and the environment, and the human place within the biosphere. She had an extraordinary sensitivity to the beauty of nature — while simultaneously being solidly grounded in the dispassionate scientific understanding of the natural world. Her skill with words and her no-nonsense understanding of facts and relationships in the environment lent a power to her persuasion most notably in her last book, Silent Spring (1962), which brought about a dramatic redirection in the study of pesticides and their complex consequences.
Too many writers to mention were influenced by her confident ability to capture “the breath of science on the still glass of poetry,” as one critic described her prose. Loren Eiseley, Marianne Moore, Edward Abbey, Annie Dillard, Lewis Thomas, John McPhee, Gary Snyder, Bernd Heinrich, Sy Montgomery — anyone who is compelled to write of the most basic and urgent issue, the survival of humanity on earth, must read Rachel Carson. She is not only a necessity, she is a pleasure and a revelation.
Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature
Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature
Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, published in 1962, did more than any other single publication to alert the world to the hazards of environmental poisoning and to inspire a powerful social movement that would alter the course of American history. This definitive, sweeping biography shows the origins of Carson's fierce dedication to natural science--and tells the dramatic story of how Carson, already a famous nature writer, became a brillant if reluctant reformer. Drawing on unprecendented access to sources and interviews, Lear masterfully explores the roots of Carson's powerful connection to the natural world, crafting a " fine portrait of the environmentalist as a human being" (Smithsonian).
Linda Lear is the editor of Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson. She was consultant to the PBS television documentary "The Silent Spring of Rachel Carson" for The American Experience, and is a founder of the Lear/Carson archive at Connecticut College. Her most recent book is Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature. She lives in Bethesda, MD.