Inspired at a young age by her twin muses, literature and nature, Rachel Louise Carson (1907-1964) is remembered today as a pioneer in environmental awareness and protection. A marine biologist and conservationist, Carson wrote eloquent and engaging prose for a broad audience about ecological issues that made a lasting impression on her immediate community and upon subsequent generations of environmentalists. She is remembered as an impactful author, whose life was influenced by her early exposure to nature and to books.
Born and raised on a 65-acre farm outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Carson discovered her love of animals and nature through her own exploration of the land as well as by reading. She was influenced by the works of Beatrix Potter, Gene Stratton-Porter, Herman Melville, and Robert Louis Stevenson among others. At only ten years old, Carson’s first story was published in St. Nicholas Magazine, and she continued to have her own stories published throughout her childhood.
As she progressed through formal education, graduating first in her high school class (1925) and attending the Pennsylvania College for Women (now Chatham University), Carson continued to focus on her writing. She majored in English and contributed to the school’s newspaper. In her sophomore year of college, Carson enrolled in a biology course led by instructor Mary Scott Skinker. Under Skinker’s mentorship, Carson changed her major from English to Biology in 1928, and in 1932, she earned her master’s degree in zoology from Johns Hopkins University.
Though she had every intention of pursuing a doctorate, the Great Depression forced Carson to look for work to help support her family. At the urging of Skinker, Carson secured a temporary position writing weekly educational and entertaining radio broadcasts for the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries. Her success stemmed from her ability to explain the important work of the Bureau in a way that was engaging for a broad, popular audience. This informed approachability became one of Carson’s most effective tools throughout the rest of her career.
During the 1940s and 1950s, Carson wrote essays and articles for newspapers and magazines in her signature style—entertaining and informative. Her first book-length work, published in 1941 with the title Under the Sea Wind, was a reworking of essays originally published in the Atlantic Monthly. Though the book received positive reviews, it was commercially unsuccessful. Carson released another series of essays and articles in 1951 that were published as The Sea Around Us, which was followed in 1955 by The Edge of the Sea.
In 1952, Carson retired from government service to focus on her writing. She published several articles and essays that emphasized the beauty of the natural world to foster within her readers an appreciation for their role within a larger ecological system. Carson’s biographer, Linda Lear, wrote the following of her work: “Embedded within all of Carson’s writing was the view that human beings were but one part of nature distinguished primarily by their power to alter it, in some cases irreversibly.”
During World War II, Carson became increasingly concerned about the long-term impact of chemical pesticides on the environment—particularly the use of DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) which was introduced in 1945 in the United States. As a biologist, Carson saw beyond the immediate benefits of its use and began writing about her observations of the way in which the substance was linked to abnormalities in fish and wildlife. The resulting volume, published in 1962 with the title Silent Spring, was read widely and helped to advance the modern environmental movement and the eventual national ban on DDT.
Carson’s signature combination of scientific knowledge and skillful nature-writing coalesced in Silent Spring, as she described her observations about the negative effects of synthetic pesticides on interconnected ecosystems. The copy of Silent Spring held in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division’s Aramont Library, still pristine in its original dust jacket, contains a typewritten letter from Cameron M. Baird, then the president of Baird & McGuire, Inc. to William A. Straleau, the tree warden of Sheffield, Maine that testifies to the lasting impact of Carson’s writing. In the letter, Baird describes the process of development, review, and approval required of new chemical products prior to being put on the market.
While these letters are a testament to the pragmatic realities of specific policies and practices, Silent Spring itself was the product of Carson’s fundamental belief in something greater than quotidian bureaucratic imperatives. Part of what inspired Carson’s writing was her determination to preserve the source that gave her strength and filled her with wonder as a child. In an interview with the Evening Star printed on March 8, 1953, Carson attributed her interest in preserving nature to her formative childhood experiences. Her essay, “Help Your Child to Wonder,” published in the Women’s Home Companion in July of 1956 and reprinted as a monograph, sought to encourage other adults to provide similar experiences to children which would leave a lasting sense of natural awe and duty to the environment. In her deeply emotional prose, Carson argued in favor of introducing children to the natural world as an important aspect of human development and the larger social good:
A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantment of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.
The legacy of Carson’s nature writing includes not only a concern for environmental protections but also a broader effort to introduce young people to the natural world to preserve their sense of wonder and beauty. Carson’s writing inspired the environmental movement that eventually led to the first Earth Day celebration in 1970, a tradition observed on April 22nd for more than 50 years. For more information and resources relating to Carson’s work and environmental topics, see the Rachel Carson Resource Guide from the Science, Technology and Business Division.
SOURCES
Carson, Rachel. The Sense of Wonder [by] Rachel Carson. Photos. by Charles Pratt and others. New York, Harper & Row [1965, c1956]. https://lccn.loc.gov/65018934
Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. Drawings by Lois and Louis Darling. Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company / Cambridge : The Riverside Press. 1962. https://lccn.loc.gov/60005148
Evening star. (Washington, D.C.), 08 March 1953. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1953-03-08/ed-1/seq-151/
Lear, Linda J.. Rachel Carson : Witness for Nature. 1st Mariner Books ed. Boston : Mariner Books, 2009. https://lccn.loc.gov/2009288432
RESOURCES
Cuffia, Ashley. “Rachel Carson: Defender of the Natural World.” Inside Adams. March 25, 2022.
Rachel Carson: A Resource Guide. Science, Technology and Business Division. Library of Congress.
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, “Rachel Carson (1907-1964) Author of the Modern Environmental Movement.”