Environmental Transformations in Victorian, Edwardian and Modernist Essays

This collection explores different essays of the late 19th and early 20th centuries by British prose-writers registering and reflecting upon the changing environment in which they were living. From canonical writings by John Ruskin to Virginia Woolf through near-canonical authors such as Ouida, Vernon Lee, Vita Sackville-West, and Sylvia Townsend Warner, ‘Transformations of the Environment’ focuses on a neglected genre to uncover how the Victorians, Edwardians and Modernists experienced, described and defined it.

Rural or urban, pastoral or polluted, affected or damaged by urbanization, industrialization, or war, different visions of the environment found their way in a wealth of essays from the more speculative to the most militant. This eminently plastic genre was affected in its style or form by the transformations of the environment: it also sought to have some impact on the environment itself using different strategies to engage readers into actions. In a more condensed manner, essays by canonical writers or neglected ones refine our knowledge of what the environment meant for them while affording the readers materials and insight to live their own modernity.