Rachel Carson (Biography and Reading Lists)

Rachel Carson

(27 May 1907 – 14 April 1964)

                                                          

Rachel Carson’s yearbook portrait (1928, photographer unknown)

1907  b. 27 May (Rachel Louise Carson) on a small family farm near Springdale, PA.  Daughter of Robert Warden Carson (insurance salesman) and Maria Frazier (McLean) Carson. 

1925  Graduated high school in Parnassus, PA at the top of her class of 45 students.

1929  Pennsylvania College for Women (Chatham University), A.B.  Originally majored in English, but switched to biology.  Continued to contribute to the school’s student newspaper and literary supplement.  Graduated magna cum laude.

1932  Studied genetics at Johns Hopkins University.  Awarded A.M. in biology.

1935  Robert Warden Carson died.  His sudden death left Rachel Carson with the care of her aging mother, and added to financial difficulties that prevented her from studying for a doctorate.

1936  Becomes the second woman hired by the Bureau of Fisheries for a full-time professional position (junior aquatic biologist).

1937  (January)  Carson’s older sister died, leaving her with the additional care of her two nieces. Under the Sea-Wind (first book) published in the Atlantic.

1949  Appointed chief editor of publications for the Fish and Wildlife Service (formerly Bureau of

Fisheries).

1952  The Sea Around Us won the U.S. National Book Award for Nonfiction, and the Burroughs Medal.  It remained on the New York Times Best Seller List for 86 weeks.  The book’s success resulted in two honorary doctorates for Carson, and enabled her to leave her job to focus on writing full-time.

1953  The film based on The Sea Around Us won an Oscar for Best Documentary although Carson was unhappy with the final version produced by Irwin Allen.

(July) Met Dorothy Freeman, with whom she shared an exceptionally close friendship.

1955  Completed the final book of the trilogy The Edge of the Sea.

1957  One of Carson’s nieces died at the age of 31, leaving her with the care of  Roger Christie, a 5-

year-old orphan son.

1962  (27 September)  Silent Spring published by Houghton Mifflin.  Became Book-of-the Month

for October 1962.

1964  (14 April)  Carson died at the age of 56, Silver Spring MD--cause of death: breast cancer.

 

Interesting Facts:

• As a child (age 8-11), Carson enjoyed the novels of Gene Stratton-Porter, and in her teen years,

those of Herman Melville.

• Silent Spring sold over 500,000 hardcover copies.

• The controversial book generated intense public concern, and caused President John F. Kennedy to

announce a federal investigation into the problem of mass pesticide use.  The report of the President's

Science Advisory Committee (issued May 1963) endorsed the basic premise of Silent Spring by

“warning against the indiscriminate use of pesticides and urging stricter controls and more research”

(Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2004).

• Al Gore wrote the introduction to the 1994 edition of Silent Spring.

 

Writings by Rachel Carson:

BOOKS

• Under the Sea-Wind; A Naturalist's Picture of Ocean Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1941; corrected edition, New York: Oxford University Press, 1952; London: Staples, 1952).
• Food from Home Waters . . . Fishes of the Middle West (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1943).
• Food from the Sea: Fish and Shellfish of New England, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Bulletin, no. 33 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1943).
• Fish and Shellfish of the South Atlantic and Gulf Coasts (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1944).
• Chincoteague: A National Wildlife Refuge (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1947).
• Mattamuskeet: A National Wildlife Refuge (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1947).
• Guarding Our Wildlife Resources, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Conservation in Action, no. 5 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1948).
• Bear River: A National Wildlife Refuge, text by Carson and Vanez T. Wilson, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Conservation in Action, no. 8 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1950).
• The Sea Around Us (New York: Oxford University Press, 1951; London: Staples, 1952; revised and enlarged, New York: Oxford University Press, 1961).
• The Edge of the Sea (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1955; London: Staples, 1956); chapter “The Rocky Shores” republished separately as The Rocky Coast, with photographs by Charles Pratt and illustrations by Robert Hines (New York: McCall, 1971).
• Silent Spring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962; London: Hamilton, 1963).
• The Living Ocean: A Special Report (Chicago: Field, 1963).
• The Sense of Wonder (New York & Evanston: Harper & Row, 1965).
• Lost Woods: The Discovered Writings of Rachel Carson, edited by Linda Lear (Boston: Beacon, 1998).

Collection

• The Sea (London: McGibbon & Kee, 1964)--comprises Under the Sea-Wind, The Sea Around Us, The Edge of the Sea.

PRODUCED SCRIPT

• “Something About the Sky,” television, Omnibus, CBS, 11 March 1956.

OTHER

• “Odyssey of the Eels,” in The Book of Naturalists, edited by William Beebe (New York: Knopf, 1944), pp. 478-495.
• Claude Debussy, La Mer, NBC Symphony, conducted by Arturo Toscanini, jacket notes by Carson, RCA, 1951.
• “To Understand Biology,” in Humane Biology Projects (New York: Animal Welfare Institute, 1960).
• Ruth Harrison, Animal Machines: The New Factory Farming Industry, foreword by Carson (London: Stuart, 1964).

SELECTED PERIODICAL PUBLICATIONS--UNCOLLECTED

• “It'll be Shad Time Soon,” Baltimore Sunday Sun, 1 March 1936.
• “Undersea,” Atlantic Monthly, 160 (September 1937): 322-325.
• “The Bat Knew It First,” Collier's (18 November 1944): 24.
• “The Birth of an Island,” Yale Review, 40, no. 1 (September 1950): 112-126.
• “Wealth from the Salt Seas,” Science Digest, 28 (October 1950): 321-329.
• “Mr. Day's Dismissal,” Washington Post, 22 April 1953, p. A26.
• “Our Ever-Changing Shore,” Holiday, 24 (July 1958): 71-120.
• “Rachel Carson Answers Her Critics,” Audubon, 65 (September/October 1963): 262-265, 313-315.

LETTERS

• Always, Rachel: The Letters of Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman 1952-1964, edited by Martha Freeman, introduction by Paul Brooks (Boston: Beacon, 1995).

PAPERS

·         Collections of Rachel Carson documents are held by the Rachel Carson Council in Chevy Chase MD and in the Rachel Carson Collection at the Beinicke Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT.

 

BIOGRAPHIES

• Brooks, Paul, The House of Life: Rachel Carson at Work, Houghton Mifflin (Boston), 1972.
• Meiners, Roger E., et al., eds.  Silent Spring at 50: The False Crises of Rachel Carson, Cato Institute (Washington, D. C.), 2012.
• Lear, Linda, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature, Holt (New York), 1997.
• Levine, Ellen, Rachel Carson: A Twentieth-Century Life, Viking (New York), 2007.
• Souder, William, On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson, 1^st edition, Crown Publishers (New York), 2012. 
• Sterling, Philip, Sea and Earth: The Life of Rachel Carson, Crowell (New York), 1970.

    Fig. 1  American robins killed by DDT as shown in Michigan State

               University research in 1961 (Introduction to Ornithology,

               3^rd ed., 1975).

 

    Fig. 2  The U.S. Army uses DDT to end the typhus epidemic in Naples (January 1944).

 

Biographical Source for Hand-Out

Literature Resource Center.  Gale Cengage Learning.  Accessed 15 Apr. 2013.