Ecology in print: publishing Picturesque California, 1887-1976
Date
2016
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Weaving American environmental history with the history of the book, this thesis considers the publishing trajectory of one text, Picturesque California, to speak more broadly to connections between material agency, ecological thinking, and the business of making books from the late nineteenth century to the later twentieth. Edited by John Muir and published serially from 1887 to 1891, Picturesque California took readers on a visual and literary journey through the American West. Readers also embarked on a material journey through the book, engaging with clay-coated paper, synthetic gold foil, and new printing processes. While Picturesque California presented its readers with idealized representations of wilderness, an ecocritical interpretation suggests that these were overwhelmed by the book’s materials and distribution networks, products of industrialization and resource exploitation. In 1974 and 1976 respectively, Ashland, Oregon’s Lewis Osborne and Philadelphia’s Running Press reprinted the book. Osborne reprinted Picturesque California as an art book for the collectors’ market, while the Running Press reprinted it as an inexpensive paperback, much like the press’ how-to books marketed to ecologically-minded Americans. Although the two reprints contained the same content, their contrasts in material and marketing suggest their makers’ different interpretations of Picturesque California’s nineteenth-century environmental writings and landscape illustrations. Both, however, point to the potential for scholarly and public audiences alike to engage with American environmental heritage to better understand the relationship between humans and the world in which we live.