Appalachian Wilderness: The Great Smoky Mountains

Eliot Porter, Edward Abbey

Dutton, 1970 - Fiction - 123 pages

In this handsomely produced book Eliot Porter catches and holds the majestic beauty of the Appalachian wilderness. Veiled mountains, big woods, wild flowers and highland streams are among the scenes, faithfully reproduced here in four colors, that readers will return to again and again. In contrast to Elliot Porter's enchanting natural world is the harsh human history of the Appalachians --the blighting force of today's industrial tourism, the sad fate of the Cherokee Indians and the mountaineers who followed them, sensitively recorded here by Edward Abbey.

Contents

• Appalachian Pictures: 13
• Appalachian Rock: 28
• Appalachian People: 65

About the author

Edward Abbey was born January 29, 1927 in Indiana, Pennsylvania, and grew up in nearby Home. After military service in Naples, Italy, from 1945-47, he enrolled in Indiana University of Pennsylvania for a year before traveling to the West. He fell in love with the desert Southwest and eventually attended the University of New Mexico, where he obtained both graduate and post-graduate degrees. Abbey was a Fulbright Fellow from 1951-52. Abbey was an anarchist and a radical environmentalist; these positions are reflected in his writings. His novel Fire on the Mountain won the Western Heritage Award for Best Novel in 1963. Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness, considered by many to be his best work, is nonfiction that reflects Abbey's love for the American Southwest and draws on his experiences as a park ranger. Among his best-known works are The Brave Cowboy (1956), The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975), and The Fool's Progress (1988). In 1966 The Brave Cowboy was made into a movie titled Lonely Are the Brave, starring Kirk Douglas. Two collections of essays have been published since his death in 1989: Confessions of a Barbarian in 1994 and The Serpents of Paradise the following year. In 1987, Abbey was offered the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, but he declined. Abbey died in March 1989, near Tucson, Arizona, from complications following surgery. He did not want a traditional burial but rather requested to be buried in the Arizona desert, where he could nourish the earth which had been the subject of so many of his works.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Appalachian Wilderness: The Great Smoky Mountains
• Authors: Eliot Porter, Edward Abbey
• author of text accompanying photos: Eliot Porter, Edward Abbey
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Dutton, 1970
• Original from: Indiana University
• Digitized: Sep 8, 2008
• ISBN: 0525056858, 9780525056850
• Length: 123 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / General; Photography / Subjects & Themes / Regional; Travel / United States / South / South Atlantic (DC, DE, FL, GA, MD, NC, SC, VA, WV)