Pennsylvania naturalist William Bartram (1739–1823) is best known as the author of a travelogue describing his botanizing journey through the American South in the late eighteenth century. Writing was not, however, Bartram’s only or even preferred method of recording the natural world around him. His deeply unconventional drawings, depicting sentient plants and hybrid organic forms, lie at the heart of his understanding of nature. With this book, Elizabeth Athens considers the strangeness of Bartram’s graphic enterprise, exploring the essential role his renderings played in his natural history. For Bartram, the making and interpretation of figures on a surface was a dynamic and collaborative relationship between nature, the observing artist-naturalist, and the audience. This book offers the first in-depth investigation of Bartram’s drawing practice as central to his understanding of nature. Through an examination of Bartram’s approach to botanical and zoological representation, Athens highlights the struggle between different modes of seeing nature in eighteenth-century Enlightenment science.

"Brings together and highlights some of the latest and most engaging work on William Bartram and efforts to commemorate his journey through the disparate region that would become the Southeastern US"--

At a time when the environment is of growing concern to students and general readers, nature writing is especially meaningful. This book profiles the literary careers of 52 early American nature writers, such as John James Audubon, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Caroline Stansbury Kirkland, Thomas Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau, and Mabel Osgood Wright. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and discusses the writer's life and works. Entries close with primary and secondary bibliographies, and the encyclopedia ends with suggestions for further reading. Global warming, pollution, and other issues have made the environment a topic of constant discussion these days. Many environmental concerns were treated by early American nature writers, who recognized the beauty of the natural world in an age of commercial expansion. Some of the most famous writers of the 18th and 19th centuries wrote about nature, and their works are stylistic masterpieces. At a time when students are being encouraged to read and write about nonfiction, these masterworks of early American nature writing are all the more important. This book gives students and general readers a welcome introduction to early American nature writers.

Originally established in 1775 the town of Lexington, Kentucky grew quickly into a national cultural center amongst the rolling green hills of the Bluegrass Region. Nicknamed the "Athens of the West," Lexington and the surrounding area became a leader in higher education, visual arts, architecture, and music, and the center of the horse breeding and racing industries. The national impact of the Bluegrass was further confirmed by prominent Kentucky figures such as Henry Clay and John C. Breckinridge. The Idea of the Athens of the West: Central Kentucky in American Culture, 1792-1852, chronicles Lexington's development as one of the most important educational and cultural centers in America during the first half of the nineteenth century. Editors Daniel Rowland and James C. Klotter gather leading scholars to examine the successes and failures of Central Kentuckians from statehood to the death of Henry Clay, in an investigation of the area's cultural and economic development and national influence. The Idea of the Athens of the West is an interdisciplinary study of the evolution of Lexington's status as antebellum Kentucky's cultural metropolis.

Combining humor and seriousness, this picture-filled book beautifully documents an artistic collaboration across more than two centuries. The 18th-century naturalist/artist William Bartram is renowned for hisTravels, a volume recounting his 1770s trip through the American Southeast and for his revelatory drawings. Mark Dion is a contemporary artist famous for working with historical and museum collections, and for site-specific displays that mimic the historical exhibits surrounding them. Commissioned for the landmark John Bartram house at Philadelphia's Bartram's Garden, the "Travels Reconsidered" exhibition and Dion's 21st-century journey that produced it are evoked inTravels of William Bartram - Reconsidered, a book filled with copious photographs, drawings, and texts. Essays by the organizing art curator and an art critic; the first history of Bartram's Garden published in 50 years, by its Resident Bartram Scholar; and excerpts from Mark Dion's travel diary and reproductions of letters and texts about the project and its people make this book a treasure trove of exploration that encompasses different times, spaces, and ideas of natural history and art. Distributed by Temple University Press for The John Bartram Association

Presents literary criticism on the works of nineteenth-century writers of all genres, nations, and cultures. Critical essays are selected from leading sources, including published journals, magazines, books, reviews, diaries, broadsheets, pamphlets, and scholarly papers. Criticism includes early views from the author's lifetime as well as later views, including extensive collections of contemporary analysis.

Widely acknowledged as a contemporary classic that has introduced thousands of readers to American literature, From Puritanism to Postmodernism: A History of American Literature brilliantly charts the fascinating story of American literature from the Puritan legacy to the advent of postmodernism. From realism and romanticism to modernism and postmodernism it examines and reflects on the work of a rich panoply of writers, including Poe, Melville, Fitzgerald, Pound, Wallace Stevens, Gwendolyn Brooks and Thomas Pynchon. Characterised throughout by a vibrant and engaging style it is a superb introduction to American literature, placing it thoughtfully in its rich social, ideological and historical context. A tour de force of both literary and historical writing, this Routledge Classics edition includes a new preface by co-author Richard Ruland, a new foreword by Linda Wagner-Martin and a fascinating interview with Richard Ruland, in which he reflects on the nature of American fiction and his collaboration with Malclolm Bradbury. It is published here for the first time.