"The tradition of John Burroughs, which you seek to keep alive through these awards, is a long and honorable one. It is a tradition that had its beginnings in even earlier writings. On the other side of the Atlantic it flowered most fully in the works of Richard Jefferies and W. H. Hudson; and in this country the pen of Thoreau - as that of John Burroughs himself-most truly represented the contemplative observer of the world about us. These four, I think, were the great masters. To those of us who have come later, there can scarcely be any greater honor than to be compared to one of them. Yet if we are true to the spirit of John Burroughs, or of Jefferies or Hudson or Thoreau, we are not imitators of them but-as they themselves were - we are pioneers in new areas of thought and knowledge. If we are true to them, we are the creators of a new type of literature as representative of our own day as was their own."
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Novelists from EnglandEssayists from EnglandChildren's authorsEnvironmentalists from EnglandJournalists from England
Original Language: English
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Rachel Carson 1950s speech included in Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson (1998)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Jefferies
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Richard Jefferies
(6 November 1848 – 14 August 1887) was an English nature writer, noted for his depiction of English rural life in essays, books of natural history, and novels. His childhood on a small Wiltshire farm had a great influence on him and provides the background to all his major works of fiction.
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