The Dawn of Green: Manchester, Thirlmere, and Modern Environmentalism - Hardcover

Ritvo, Harriet

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226720829 ISBN 13: 9780226720821

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2009

Synopsis

Located in the heart of England’s Lake District, the placid waters of Thirlmere seem to be the embodiment of pastoral beauty. But under their calm surface lurks the legacy of a nineteenth-century conflict that pitted industrial progress against natural conservation—and helped launch the environmental movement as we know it. Purchased by the city of Manchester in the 1870s, Thirlmere was dammed and converted into a reservoir, its water piped one hundred miles south to the burgeoning industrial city and its workforce. This feat of civil engineering—and of natural resource diversion—inspired one of the first environmental struggles of modern times. The Dawn of Green re-creates the battle for Thirlmere and the clashes between conservationists who wished to preserve the lake and developers eager to supply the needs of a growing urban population. Bringing to vivid life the colorful and strong-minded characters who populated both sides of the debate, noted historian Harriet Ritvo revisits notions of the natural promulgated by romantic poets, recreationists, resource managers, and industrial developers to establish Thirlmere as the template for subsequent—and continuing—environmental struggles.

About this title

About the Author:

Harriet Ritvo is the Arthur J. Conner Professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author of The Platypus and the Mermaid, and Other Figments of the Classifying Imagination;The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age; and Noble Cows and Hybrid Zebras: Essays on Animals and History.

Review:

"[Ritvo's] book conveys in vividly minute particulars how difficult and frustrating the campaign must have been, and how divided the campaigners were in their loyalties. Without such detail, lessons cannot be learnt. Nor is documentation allowed to obscure the larger picture. Ritvo shows the whole business to be, in contrary ways, representative of its times: 'if Manchester was the icon of the Victorian future, the Lake District was the icon of nature, poetry and heritage.'"—Times Higher Education (Times Higher Education)

"In the 1870s, Manchester, England purchased Thirlmere, a country lake, and turned it into a resevoir for the city to use. The conflict surrounding the construction of the resevoir pitted industrialists against conservationists and helped launch the modern enviromental movement. This book serves as a reminder that people in other places and times have struggled to preserve nature, just like us."—Sierra Club (Sierra Club)

“A closely researched, sensitively observed, and handsomely illustrated study. . . . This is a gem of a book, enhanced by prose as crystal clear as Thirlmere’s fabled waters.”

(Peter Coates Environmental History)

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0226720829
• ISBN 13: 9780226720821
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 248