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Book/Printed Material The lay of the land,

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About this Item

Title

  • The lay of the land,

Summary

  • As more and more Americans made their lives in cities and suburbs, a generation of writers younger than the revered John Burroughs sustained the American tradition of the nature-essay to guide their fellow-countrymen into a continuing appreciation for the natural world. Dallas Lore Sharp was one of the best and most prolific and most popular of these, a Bostonian professor who excelled at writing charming, disarmingly personal, reflective nature-essays that were often especially articulate and perceptive about the human encounter with the natural world. Sharp's subject definitely is not wilderness; it is, rather, the pastoralist's woods and fields in which most Americans came to know "nature" at this time (one of Sharp's other books is appropriately titled Wild Life Near Home). Nevertheless, like Thoreau and Burroughs before them, Sharp and his peers prepared Americans to be sensitive to the natural world in ways which ultimately made wilderness, too, seem something to be valued and preserved. This book has particular relevance to the history of conservationism, because in addition to providing representative examples of Sharp's nature-essays, its chapter on "The Nature Movement" reflects on turn-of-the-century-Americans' infatuation with nature--a cultural trend to which early conservationism owed a great deal of its identity--and attempts to situate this movement within the history of American culture. American Memory.

Names

  • Sharp, Dallas Lore, 1870-1929

Created / Published

  • Boston, New York, Houghton Mifflin company, 1908.

Contents

  • The muskrats are building.--Christmas in the woods.--A cure for winter.--The nature-student.--Chickadee.--The missing tooth.--The sign of the shad-bush.--The nature movement.--June.--A broken feather.--High noon.--The palace in the pig-pen.--An account with nature.--The buzzard of the bear swamp.--The lay of the land.

Headings

  • -  Natural history--Outdoor books

Medium

  • 4 p.l., 213, [1] p., 1 l. illus. 20 cm.

Call Number/Physical Location

  • QH81 .S5

Digital Id

Library of Congress Control Number

  • 08027140

Online Format

  • image

Additional Metadata Formats

IIIF Presentation Manifest

Rights & Access

The books in this collection are in the public domain and are free to use and reuse.

Credit Line: Library of Congress

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Cite This Item

Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.

Chicago citation style:

Sharp, Dallas Lore. The Lay of the Land. Boston, New York, Houghton Mifflin company, 1908. Image. https://www.loc.gov/item/08027140/.

APA citation style:

Sharp, D. L. (1908) The Lay of the Land. Boston, New York, Houghton Mifflin company. [Image] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/08027140/.

MLA citation style:

Sharp, Dallas Lore. The Lay of the Land. Boston, New York, Houghton Mifflin company, 1908. Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/08027140/>.