Animals in the American Classics

November 2, 2022 By John E. Riutta in Newly Noted Books Tags: animals, book, classics, Fiction, Gruessen, literary criticism, Natural History, News, Texas A&M

If you’re a regular reader of The Well-read Naturalist (and if so thank you very much for doing so) you’ve by now discovered that it’s as much about being well-read as it is about natural history. So when a new book is published that brings together the two of these, I most enthusiastically sit up and take notice. Such is the case with the recently published Animals in the American Classics; How Natural History Inspired Great Fiction.

Edited by Dr. John Cullen Gruesser and including the contributions by a dozen scholars in the relevant fields of study, this new book presents its readers with examinations of animals as they appear in works of American fiction beginning with that of Washington Irving and continuing up to the present day.

The most recent addition to Texas A&M University Press’ Integrative Natural History Series, sponsored by Texas Research Institute for Environmental Studies at Sam Houston State University, this new book should find an interested audience among both natural history and American literature enthusiasts.

John E. Riutta

Founder and publisher of The Well-read Naturalist. Inveterate autodidact. Has repeatedly been found out standing in many fields. Plays well with otters.

→ John E. Riutta

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