According to the tenets of ecofeminism, there are explicit connections between society's treatment of women and the degradation of our environment, connections made apparent in the patriarchal devaluation of both women and nature. In Speaking for Nature, a groundbreaking inquiry into the contributions of early modern English women writers to ecological thought, Sylvia Bowerbank uncovers the historical roots of contemporary debates within ecofeminism as found in the works of such major literary figures as Mary Wroth, Margaret Cavendish, and Mary Wollstonecraft.

In early modern England, the entry of women into the politics of nature occurred during a volatile period when the cultural meaning of nature was being destabilized by scientific advances and religious controversies, thus opening up new rights, roles, and responsibilities for women. For the two centuries covered in this book, Bowerbank describes a range of choices made by literary women in negotiating their place within the broader discourse on nature and humanity's changing relationship to it. We learn about Wroth's gendered critique of pastoral fantasies and green utopias, Cavendish's resistance to the philosophy that declared "Great Nature" dead, and Wollstonecraft's opposition to both world capitalism and local subsistence. Anna Seward champions the local as a site of environmental well-being and the eighteenth-century invention of "the study of nature" as a legitimate field of intellectual inquiry. Speaking for Nature explores this rich, diverse, and often contradictory legacy of ecological thought, the value of which is only just being appreciated and evaluated by present-day environmentalists and feminists.

Sylvia Bowerbank is a professor of English at McMaster University.

Sylvia Bowerbank's profile page

"A splendid example in itself of its own subject, of crossing the boundary between scholarship and life, reclaiming scholarship as a part of a natural community."

Eighteenth Century: Current Bibliography

"Rich and thought-provoking study... An ambitious attempt to read the environment responses of the past from a position of deep sensitivity to the contexts and contingencies of her texts."

Modern Philology

"Sylvia Bowerbank spent her last years writing a thoughtful and stirring book — it's a fine legacy, and, for us, an important one."

Eighteenth-Century Intelligencer

"Bowerbank's passion for her own ecological agenda in no way detracts from the sophistication of her argument. The issue underlying the book—how best to live in harmony with the resources of our planet—remains urgently important."

"This is a rich and richly documented book."

Early Modern Literary Studies

"The historical and philosophical depth of her work, however, takes it beyond the alluring myths of women's special natural wisdom... Fascinating range and detail."

Modern Language Review

"A ground-breaking contribution to the history of women's ecological thought."

University of Toronto Quarterly

"Provides a rich and troubling legacy of ideas for environmental and feminist scholars alike to ponder."