Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson
“The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth. And that, I take it, is the aim of literature ... It seems to me, then, that there can be no separate literature of science.”
Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson is a treasure trove of previously unpublished words by Carson, compiled by Linda Lear. The book contains essays, newspaper articles, correspondence and speeches, such as this one from The National Book Award for Nonfiction in 1952, where she won the award for The Sea Around Us. This page stood out for her views, which we strongly share, on the connections between science and literature, and of the place for nature writing in today's world which she details in another chapter (we didn’t say we’d only choose one page per book).
Thank you very much to David Gange (The Frayed Atlantic Edge) who donated Lost Woods to The Nature Library, adding to our beloved Rachel Carson collection.
Rachel Carson was a writer, scientist, and ecologist, grew up simply in the rural river town of Springdale, Pennsylvania. Carson graduated from Pennsylvania College for Women (now Chatham University) in 1929, studied at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, and received her MA in zoology from Johns Hopkins University in 1932. Her first book, Under the Sea-Wind was published in 1941 and followed in 1952 by The Sea Around Us, and The Edge of the Sea in 1955. In 1962 Carson released Silent Spring, considered to be the book that started the global grassroots environmental movement and which led to led a nationwide ban on DDT for agricultural uses.
