Back to Nature: The Arcadian Myth in Urban America / Edition 1

by Peter J. Schmitt

Overview

Peter J. Schmitt describes the many ways in which America's urban middle class became involved with nature from the turn of the century to shortly after World War I, and he assess the influence of the "Arcadian myth" on American culture. With sympathy and gentle irony, he surveys the manifestations of the American love affair with the country: summer camps, the beginnings of wildlie protection and the conservation crusade, landscaped cemeteris, "Christian ornithology," and wilderness novels. The Arcadian drive reflected urban values, as the city-dweller sought virtue in nature. Landscape gardening, country clubs, national parks, and scenic turnoffs imposed the industrial ethic of order, neatness, and regularity on natural landscaps. Nature study and anthropomorphic animal stories taught moral values to children.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801840135
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	02/01/1990
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Peter J. Schmitt is professor of history at Western Michigan University.

Table of Contents

Foreword, by John R. Stilgoe
Preface
Preface to the First Edition
Introduction
Chapter 1. Back to nature
Chapter 2. The Literary Commuter
Chapter 3. Birds in the Bush
Chapter 4. Nature Fakers
Chapter 5. This Elegant Art
Chapter 6. Keep Off the Grass
Chapter 7. Arcadia Comes to School
Chapter 8. Bluebirds and Beansprouts
Chapter 9. The Customary Thing
Chapter 10. Backwoods Brotherhoods
Chapter 11. Children's Fiction and the Out-of-Doors
Chapter 12. The Wilderness Novel
Chapter 13. The Church in the Wildwood
Chapter 14. Nature and the Camer
Chapter 15. The Search for Scenery
Chapter 16. The Search for Solitude
Chapter 17. The New Frontier
Notes
Selected REadings since 1969
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Contributes not only to our understanding of the place of wilderness in the popular mind, but to the forces that made early-twentieth-century Americans dissatisfied with the urban lives they had chosen.
—John R. Stilgoe

John R. Stilgoe

Contributes not only to our understanding of the place of wilderness in the popular mind, but to the forces that made early-twentieth-century Americans dissatisfied with the urban lives they had chosen.

Editorial Reviews

The subject has needed detailed treatment for years, and I always expected the definitive study would be accomplished by a naturalist. But Peter Schmitt is a historian, and it's probably better that way after all. I guess this book is the one I've been looking for.
—John Eastman, Natural History

From the Publisher

The subject has needed detailed treatment for years, and I always expected the definitive study would be accomplished by a naturalist. But Peter Schmitt is a historian, and it's probably better that way after all. I guess this book is the one I've been looking for.

Natural History - John Eastman

The subject has needed detailed treatment for years, and I always expected the definitive study would be accomplished by a naturalist. But Peter Schmitt is a historian, and it's probably better that way after all. I guess this book is the one I've been looking for.

— John Eastman

Natural History