In the following essay, Van Noy presents the work of three mappers—Henry David Thoreau, Clarence King, and John Wesley Powell—as representing various nineteenth‐century responses to the spirit of the western landscape.

In the following excerpt, Bate examines William Wordsworth's use of the pastoral, arguing that there is a continuity between the poet's love of nature and his revolutionary politics. Bate also discusses the critical response to Wordsworth's ecological writing.

In the following essay, Branch surveys the evolution of ideas about nature before the nineteenth century and goes on to discuss the contributions by three important nineteenth‐century American naturalists whose thematic concerns became central to subsequent environmental literature.

In the following essay, originally published in 1967 and then reprinted in a revised 1973 edition, Nash assesses the importance of the idea of wilderness to American culture and letters, discussing how nineteenth‐century writers such as William Cullen Bryant, James Kirke Paulding, and James Fenimore Cooper responded to the unique landscape of America.

In the following essay, Kerridge maintains that if Thomas Hardy were seen as an important author in the canon of environmental literature, ecocriticism would become more concerned with individuals and society and less with withdrawing into the wilderness.

In the following essay, Parham outlines the environmental concerns of Victorian authors and goes on to discuss, from an ecocritical point of view, works of several writers of the period, including Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, Thomas Carlyle, and John Ruskin.

In the following essay, Kroeber stresses the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to an ecologically oriented literary criticism, noting especially the need for an understanding of scientific ecology.

In the following excerpt, Kroeber describes the beginnings of ecologically inspired poetry in the work of the English Romantics.

In the following essay, which was originally delivered as a speech at Yale University in 1953 and published in the Harvard Theological Review in 1955, Miller explores the importance of the Romantic movement in America's cultural and intellectual development, arguing that one of the consequences of Romanticism was the birth of environmentalism.

In the following essay, Pite argues that British Romantic writers, far from being concerned only with solitary experiences, were social writers whose affinity for nature established links between humanity and the environment.

In the following essay, Sanders laments that recent American fiction does not turn outward to acknowledge nature.

In the following excerpt, originally published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1908, Eckstorm assesses Henry David Thoreau's treatment of the Maine wilderness, noting his lack of adeptness as a woodsman but praising his poetic understanding of nature and his ability to reveal the value of natural objects.

In the following excerpt, Marx argues that Ralph Waldo Emerson's ideas about nature are informed by American pastoralism and philosophic idealism.

In the following excerpt, Mazel traces the history of ecocriticism, discussing twentieth‐century critics' unearthing of environmental concerns in literature and focusing especially on their reading of nineteenth‐century American writing.

In the following essay, Beyers claims that John James Audubon's Ornithological Biography, which includes prose descriptions of the birds he illustrated, also offers a complex portrait of the artist himself.

In the following excerpt, Smith examines the interpretation of the American West by Charles Webber and other writers.

In the following excerpt, Clough examines the western frontier of the United States as a metaphor that has been assimilated into the American psyche and has influenced American literature.

In the following excerpt, originally published in 1926 as “The Dawn,” Mumford critiques Henry David Thoreau's writing and values, discussing the writer's views about consumerism, his ideas about the relationship between science and nature, and his interest in nature as a means for improving individuals and society.

In the following excerpt, originally published in The North American Review in 1865, Lowell presents a generally negative appraisal of Henry David Thoreau's character, powers of observation, abilities as a naturalist, and romantic view of nature.