Publisher's Synopsis
From ancient Greece to the close of the second millennium, the perceptions of the keen scientific eye have been translated over and over into graceful and meaningful texts for the common reader. By the Light of the Glow-Worm Lamp represents the best of the nature-writing genre in over three dozen works from the past three centuries.Alberto Manguel, a great reader and literary connoisseur, serves here as our guide. First outlining a "literary" history of nature writing, he organizes this anthology into four sections: Landscape, Birds, Beasts, and Insects and Fish. He includes authors who did not train as scientists (D.H. Lawrence and Vladimir Nabokov). There are zoologists (John James Audubon), conservationists (Rachael Carson), the great classic figures (Charles Darwin and J. H. Fabre), and well-known contemporary writers (Diane Ackerman, Annie Dillard, and Barry Lopez). A cornucopia of the marvelous and the earthbound, By the Light of the Glow-Worm Lamp will take its place alongside the more popular prose anthologies of our time.
