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”The fact that possesses my imagination”: Rachel Carson, Science and Writing

Montefiore, Janet E. (2001) ”The fact that possesses my imagination”: Rachel Carson, Science and Writing. Women: A Cultural Review, 12 (1). pp. 44-56. ISSN 0957-4042. (doi:10.1080/09574040110034110) (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:7137)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
Official URL:
https://doi.org/10.1080/09574040110034110

Abstract

Rachel Carson is a famous but unknown writer. She is remembered as a pioneering heroine of the ecological movement, but even her Silent Spring is hardly read and the great books about the sea that made her name are unknown to the public. Recent biographical accounts have focused on the problems Carson faced as a woman entering the male-dominated scientific community, and the sexist reception of her books. But her real life was plainly in her writing. Although the accounts of geology in The Sea around Us and of genetics in Silent Spring are outdated, her books remain classics, not only for their lucidity and beauty, but for a vision of the impersonal processes of evolution and geological time comparable to Darwin's. This is especially true of her trilogy of books on the sea: The Sea around Us , describing the biochemistry, history and geography of the oceans and their tides, Under the SeaWind, focusing on the interdependent lives of sea-creatures, while The Edge of the Sea deals with the lives, great and microscopically small, of the intertidal world. The corresponding theme of Silent Spring is the death of nature through man's folly.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1080/09574040110034110
Subjects: P Language and Literature
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Arts and Humanities > School of English
Depositing User: J.P.W. Joseph
Date Deposited: 19 Mar 2009 17:21 UTC
Last Modified: 09 Mar 2023 11:30 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/7137 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Montefiore, Janet E..

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