Good Observers of Nature

About This Book

"In 'Good Observers of Nature' Tina Gianquitto examines nineteenth-century American women's intellectual and aesthetic experiences of nature and the linguistic, perceptual, and scientific systems that were available to women to describe those experiences. Many women writers of this period used the natural world as a platform for discussing issues of domesticity, education, and the nation. To what extend, asks Gianquitto, did these writers challenge the prevalent sentimental narrative modes (like those used in the popular flower language books) and use scientific terminology to describe the world around them? Though Gianquitto explores a range of women's nature writing (botanical manuals, plant catalogs, travel narratives, seasonal journals, scientific essays), she focuses on four writers and their most influential works : Almira Phelops (Familiar Lectures on Botany, 1829), Margaret Fuller (Summer on the Lakes, in 1843), Susan Fenimore Cooper (Rural Hours, 1850), and Mary Treat (Home Studies in Nature, 1885)."--back cover.