Rachel Carson

The slipcased edition of the upcoming Rachel Carson: Silent Spring & Other Writings on the Environment volume is now available for purchase on LOA's subscribers' pages, and from the detailed course description, it looks like it will be even better than I had hoped.

David, is that the end of LOA's interest in Carson, or is there a possibly of other writings of hers being published? Her oceanographic books in particular come to mind.

The Sea Around Us was the first nature book I ever read, and it still sticks with me.

There are three sea books by Rachel Carson; they are Under the Sea Wind, The Sea Around Us, and The Edge of the Sea. All are natural history classics, and all are written in Rachel Carson's outstanding literary style (she started out as an English major and throughout her life aspired to combine excellent writing with her scientific work). These would make an excellent second volume of Rachel Carson's work. There is a final, posthumous, book called The Sense of Wonder -- with very short text and full-page photographs. I think this was put together by others after her death based on an earlier essay, and I wonder whether that earlier essay is already included in the current volume (the 1956 essay entitled "Help Your Child to Wonder").

A little late to this discussion, but (to quote the Note on the Text in the LOA's Silent Spring edition), "A Library of America volume in preparation will gather her 'sea trilogy': Under the Sea- Wind (1941), The Sea Around Us (1951), and The Edge of the Sea (1955)."

It has not yet been slotted in the schedule but it is indeed in the works.

Also, >3 euphorb::

"Help Your Child to Wonder" is indeed included in the Silent Spring volume.

--David

The Sea Trilogy was new to me, reading about it first in this thread.

How timely then that the New Yorker publishes this article on Carson's self-identification as a "poet of the sea".

Perhaps the author should read David's post here: "it’s heartbreaking to see that a new collection, “Silent Spring and Other Writings on the Environment,” edited by Sandra Steingraber (Library of America), includes not one drop of her writing about the sea." (Of course, she could have consulted the Note on the Text and learned of the new volume.)

I hope Undersea, a 1937 Atlantic Monthly article, and any other small writings about the sea, by Rachel Carson will be included in the future volume. Undersea begins," Who has known the sea? Neither you nor I, with our earth-bound senses, know the foam and surge of the tide that beats over the crab hiding under the seaweed of his tide-pool home; or the lilt of the long, slow swells of mid-ocean, where shoals of wandering fish prey and are preyed upon, and the dolphin breaks the waves to breathe the upper atmosphere." Undersea is a wonderful essay and could preface the three sea books.

edited for clarity

> 4 Thanks, David! I'm glad to hear of the plans for the future Rachel Carson volume. These were among the books in the wishlist I posted eight years ago in the very first entry when I created the "Future Volumes?" thread in this group, which has amazingly grown to 390 entries before spawning a Part 2.