What would happen, I wondered, if I simply missed out the fifty per cent of the population whose voices have been credited with shaping this particular ‘cultural form’. If I coppiced the woodland, so to speak, and allowed the light to shine down to the forest floor and illuminate countless saplings now that a gap has opened in the canopy. . . There has, in recent years, been an explosion of writing about place, landscape and the natural world. But within this blossoming of interest, women’s voices have remained very much in the minority. For the very first time, this landmark anthology collects together the work of women, over the centuries and up to the present day, who have written about the natural world in Britain, Ireland and the outlying islands of our archipelago. Alongside the traditional forms of the travelogue, the walking guide, books on birds, plants and wildlife, Women on Nature embraces alternative modes of seeing and recording that turn the genre on its head. Katharine Norbury has sifted through the pages of women’s fiction, poetry, household planners, gardening diaries and recipe books to show the multitude of ways in which they have observed the natural world about them, from the fourteenth-century writing of the anchorite Julian of Norwich to the seventeenth-century travel journal of Celia Fiennes; from the keen observations of Emily Brontë to a host of brilliant contemporary voices. Women on Nature presents a groundbreaking vision of the natural world which, in addition to being a rich and scintillating anthology that shines a light on many unjustly overlooked writers, is of unique importance in terms of women’s history and the history of writing about nature.

From the ancient world to the present women have been critical to the progress of science, yet their importance is overlooked, their stories lost, distorted, or actively suppressed. Forces of Nature sets the record straight and charts the fascinating history of women’s discoveries in science. In the ancient and medieval world, women served as royal physicians and nurses, taught mathematics, studied the stars, and practiced midwifery. As natural philosophers, physicists, anatomists, and botanists, they were central to the great intellectual flourishing of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. More recently women have been crucially involved in the Manhattan Project, pioneering space missions and much more. Despite their record of illustrious achievements, even today very few women win Nobel Prizes in science. In this thoroughly researched, authoritative work, you will discover how women have navigated a male-dominated scientific culture – showing themselves to be pioneers and trailblazers, often without any recognition at all. Included in the book are the stories of: Hypatia of Alexandria, one of the earliest recorded female mathematicians Maria Cunitz who corrected errors in Kepler’s work Emmy Noether who discovered fundamental laws of physics Vera Rubin one of the most influential astronomers of the twentieth century Jocelyn Bell Burnell who helped discover pulsars

In this famously provocative cornerstone of feminist literature, Susan Griffin explores the identification of women with the earth—both as sustenance for humanity and as victim of male rage. Starting from Plato's fateful division of the world into spirit and matter, her analysis of how patriarchal Western philosophy and religion have used language and science to bolster their power over both women and nature is brilliant and persuasive, coming alive in poetic prose. Griffin draws on an astonishing range of sources—from timbering manuals to medical texts to Scripture and classical literature—in showing how destructive has been the impulse to disembody the human soul, and how the long separated might once more be rejoined. Poet Adrienne Rich calls Woman and Nature "perhaps the most extraordinary nonfiction work to have merged from the matrix of contemporary female consciousness—a fusion of patriarchal science, ecology, female history and feminism, written by a poet who has created a new form for her vision. ...The book has the impact of a great film or a fresco; yet it is intimately personal, touching to the quick of woman's experience."

The first chronological presentation of U.S. nature writing by key women authors of the last two centuries.

A collection of new essays establishes women's voices as a powerful presence in US nature writing.

The first account of how and why pioneer women altered their self-images and their views of American Indians.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Notes on contributors -- Editor's foreword -- Part I Overview -- Introduction -- 1 Françoise d'Eaubonne and ecofeminism: rediscovering the link between women and nature -- Part II Rethinking animality -- 2 A retreat on the "river bank": perpetuating patriarchal myths in animal stories -- 3 Visual patriarchy: PETA advertising and the commodification of sexualized bodies -- 4 Ethical transfeminism: transgender individuals' narratives as contributions to ethics of vegetarian ecofeminisms -- Part III Constructing connections -- 5 The women-nature connection as a key element in the social construction of Western contemporary motherhood -- 6 The nature of body image: the relationship between women's body image and physical activity in natural environments -- 7 Writing women into back-to-the-land: feminism, appropriation, and identity in the 1970s magazine -- Part IV Mediating practices -- 8 Bilha Givon as Sartre's "third party" in environmental dialogues -- 9 "Yo soy mujer" ¿yo soy ecologista? Feminist and ecological consciousness at the Women's Intercultural Center -- 10 The politics of land, water and toxins: reading the life-narratives of three women oikos-carers from Kerala -- 11 Ecofeminism and the telegenics of celebrity in documentary film: the case of Aradhana Seth's Dam/Age (2003) and the Narmada Bachao Andolan -- Afterword -- Index