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Rachel Carson
(1907 - 1964)
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 Always,
Rachel : The Letters of Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman,
1952-1964 - The Story of a Remarkable Friendship by
Rachel Carson, Dorothy
Freeman, Martha Freeman (Editor), Paul Brooks (Introduction)
Dorothy Freeman, a fan of environmental writer
Rachel Carson, was also her best friend. The correspondence
between them charts the growth of their long affection; it also
offers much detail about Carson's concerns as a writer and
scientific reporter, to say nothing of her misgivings about being
anointed as one of the environmental movement's chief intellectual
leaders. The letters are full of talk about birds, books, and the
changing seasons. Fans of Carson--and of the forgotten art of
correspondence--are sure to enjoy Always, Rachel.
 The
Sea Around Us by
Rachel Carson, Ann H. Zwinger (Introduction), Jeffrey
Levinton (Photographer)
Published in 1951, The Sea Around Us is one of
the most remarkably successful books ever written about the
natural world. Reintroducing a classic work to a whole new
generation of readers, this Special Edition features a new chapter
written by Jeffrey Levinton, a leading expert in marine ecology,
that brings the scientific side of the book completely up to date.
 Lost
Woods : The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson by
Rachel Carson, Linda Lear (Editor)
In her lifetime, Rachel Carson published only
four books. She was a careful writer and meticulous researcher,
for one thing, and she worked as a government scientist until the
success of books like Silent Spring and The Sea Around
Us enabled her to turn to her own writing full-time. She also
published several magazine pieces, many of which biographer Linda
Lear gathers here, along with letters and journal entries. In one
piece that is characteristic both of her modesty and of her wit,
Carson remarks on her then-unusual status of being an
"average-sized woman" and a scientist, one who had just
become "a biographer of the sea." In another, Carson
writes of the necessity of protecting shorelines from economic
development that would hasten their erosion and subsequent
destruction. Carson's many fans will take much pleasure in this
anthology of her work. --Gregory McNamee
Bibliography:
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Rachel Carson (1907-1964)
NATURALIST, AUTHOR
Raised in rural Pennsylvania, Carson went on to study zoology
at Johns Hopkins University, and worked as a marine biologist for
the Fish and Wildlife Services in Washington, D.C. She would write
four best-sellers before the renowned and influential Silent
Spring in 1962. The book would be viewed as a founding text of
the international environmental movement - it was the first to
present the dangers of pesticides to the broad public.
In the early 1950s, Carson became friends with Dorothy Murdoch
Freeman and built a summer home in Maine near the home of Freeman
and her husband and son. The two women spoke on the phone or wrote
each other letters nearly every day from 1952 until Carson’s
death from cancer in 1964. In a collection of some of Carson and
Freeman’s correspondence, Freeman’s granddaughter, Martha,
reveals that the women marked their letters with code words:
letters marked “sharing” contained autobiographical
information about Carson’s research and writing; letters marked
“apple” were passionate letters for private reading and
letters marked “the strong box” were meant to be destroyed
upon reading, hundreds of those letters were reportedly burned by
the pair.
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From The Knitting Circle
Excerpt:
In the early 1950s she became friends with
Dorothy Murdoch Freeman (1898-1978) who was an administrator for
the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Services. Rachel
Carson had a summer house built in Maine near the home of Dorothy
Freeman and her husband and son. The two women exchanged telephone
calls and letters over a twelve-year period. They named some of
the letters "the strong box" indicating that they should
be destroyed after they had been read. Some of these letters may
have been destroyed but what remained were collected and annotated
by Dorothy Freeman's granddaughter, Martha Freeman...
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"The more clearly we can focus our
attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us,
the less taste we shall have for destruction." -- Rachel
Carson
This site is dedicated to Rachel Carson.
It hosts a biography, bibliographies, annotated resources on
libraries, organizations, online resources and more.
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Excerpt:
She was not by nature a crusader, but when
aerial spraying of DDT killed the birds in a friend's bird
sanctuary, she began to investigate the effects of pesticides on
the chain of life. "The environment" and
"ecology" have since become household words for
Americans, but it all began with her Silent Spring in 1962.
Driven by the knowledge that the book was desperately needed, she
pored over and combined the work of many individual researchers.
She wrote of the heedless pesticide poisoning of our rivers and
soils, warning that we might soon face a spring when no bird songs
could be heard...
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Continuing the legacy of Chatham's distinguished
alumna, the Rachel Carson Institute strives to advance the
understanding that all living things on earth are linked, bound by
systems and cycles that must be understood. The Institute provides
a forum for public education and discussion on significant
environmental issues through national and regional conferences,
lecture series, seminars, panel discussions and other education
programs. It also supports scholarship focusing on environmental
issues with a special focus upon the contributions and concerns of
women.
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Rachel Carson, author and environmentalist,
played a major role in raising the public consciousness to the
plight of sea birds and their fast disappearing habitat - the
vital coastal marshes and wetlands. Part of her work concerned
life along the edge of the sea and the role all creatures play in
the chain of life The Rachel Carson Refuge is part of a wetland
acquisition program to preserve valuable wildlife habitat at key
locations along waterfowl migration routes. This program is under
the direction of the U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and
Wildlife Service in a joint effort with the State of Maine. When
completed, the refuge will consist of 7,435 acres of salt marsh
and adjacent fresh water habitat in ten divisions between Kittery
and Cape Elizabeth.
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By Lisa Budwig
She was belittled as an antihumanitarian crank,
a priestess of nature, and a hysterical woman. The director of the
New Jersey Department of Agriculture believed she inspired a
"vociferous, misinformed group of nature-balancing, organic
gardening, bird-loving, unreasonable citizenry." An official
of the Federal Pest Control Review Board, ridiculing her concern
about genetic mutations caused by the use of pesticides, remarked,
"I thought she was a spinster. What’s she so worried about
genetics for?"
Undaunted, Rachel Carson endured such attacks
with a dignity, strength of conviction, and moral courage alien to
her opponents. Just what had this native Pennsylvanian done to
provoke these venomous and vengeful reactions? She wrote Silent
Spring, a book destined to irrevocably change the course of
world history...
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Names Index:
A B
C D
E F
G H
I J
K L
M N
O P
Q R
S T
U V
W X
Y Z
| Authors
Index | Scholars
Index |
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