This is an anthology of nearly four centuries of nature writing
about one of America's premier regions--the Blue Ridge Mountains
and Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Beginning with Captain John
Smith's eager gaze westward in search of gold and ending with
contemporary essayist John Daniel's transformative gaze inward in
search of wilderness, The Height of our Mountains features the work
of seventy of the nation's finest writers on nature, from 1607 to
1997.
Responding to Thomas Jefferson's claim in Notes on the State of
Virginia that "the height of our mountains has not yet been
estimated with any degree of exactness," Branch and Philippon have
gathered a diverse collection of written perspectives on the region
in an effort to "measure" the remarkable richness of this landscape
through a variety of literary forms and styles.
The result is a wide-ranging survey that includes the colonial
narratives of William Byrd and George Washington, as well as the
natural histories of John Bartram and John James Audubon; the
travel narratives of King Louis Philippe of France and the diaries
and memoirs of Cornelia Peake McDonald, Walt Whitman, and John
Burroughs; works of fiction by Edgar Allen Poe and Willa Cather;
speeches by James Madison, Herbert Hover, and Franklin Roosevelt;
and contemporary writings by Donald Culcross Peattie, Edwin Way
Teale, Roger Tory Peterson, Annie Dillard, Donald McCaig, Peter
Svenson, and Jake Page.
The book contains a lengthy and detailed introduction on the
character and form of nature writing, the concepts of place and
bioregionalism, and the literary natural history of the Blue Ridge
country itself. Ample notes, beautiful illustrations and amps, and
a lengthy bibliography make this book a lasting treasure.
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