Published 2019-06-01
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Scottish-born naturalist Alexander Wilson, best known for his multi-volume record of the work he did as America’s first ornithologist, American Ornithology (published 1808–1814), is also worthy of recognition for his long poem The Foresters, a semi-autobiographical work in which he recounts the journey he took on foot from Pennsylvania to
Niagara Falls in 1804. In his poetic treatment of the forest, Wilson contrasts the traditional view of the wilderness (as evident in a typical natural history of the time) with a more nuanced or even apparently contradictory Romantic view of wild nature as sublime and potentially supernatural. …”
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