The writings of George Perkins Marsh encompass one of the broadest ranges of those of any scholar and public figure in nineteenth-century America. A lawyer, legislator, philologist, linguist, diplomat, and geographer, he produced works on topics as varied as the Icelandic language and literature, the advisability of importing camels to North America, the dramatic effect which man was having on his natural environment, and the distinctiveness of American English. The student who meets Marsh for the first time almost invariably feels that there must be more than one George Perkins Marsh whom bibliographers have somehow confused.

Marsh was born in Woodstock, Vermont, into a prominent Vermont family. In 1820 he was graduated at the head of his class from Dartmouth, where he discovered a great gift for languages; he eventually mastered more than twenty. After teaching for a year, he studied law and in 1825 set up a law office...