By the Light of the Glow-Worm Lamp : Three Centuries of Reflections on Nature

Manguel, Alberto (editor)

ISBN 10: 0306459922 / ISBN 13: 9780306459924

Published by New York: Plenum Press, 1998, 1998

About this Item

VG in mat illustrated wrappers, as published. Trade paperback. 373 pp. Covers lightly rubbed. Page edges lightly sunned. Bottom page edges have remainder mark. About 40 pages near back of book waved. Spine tight, square, uncreased. Interior very clean. No marks. Good reading copy.

Seller Inventory # 6476

Bibliographic Details

• Title: By the Light of the Glow-Worm Lamp : Three Centuries of Reflections on Nature
• Publisher: New York: Plenum Press, 1998
• Publication Date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0306459922
• ISBN 13: 9780306459924
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Very Good
• Seller catalogs:
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About this title

Synopsis

From ancient Greece to the close of the second millennium, the keen scientific eye has been translated over and over into graceful and meaningful texts in which not only the world observed but the act of observation itself is set down for the common reader. By the Light of the Glow-Worm Lamp represents the best of the nature-writing genre in over three dozen works from the past three centuries.

Review

Alberto Manguel, author of A History of Reading, is a wide-ranging reader, and this anthology is the product of years of browsing the shelves in adventure travel and natural history. It includes the usual suspects, among them Charles Darwin, Henry David Thoreau, Rachel Carson, and Annie Dillard--who are heavily represented in similar anthologies--but it also includes a few pleasant surprises, such as an essay by Maurice Maeterlinck on ants, Vladimir Nabokov's graceful reflections on lepidoptery, and Jean-Henri Fabre on wasps. The anthology would have benefited from editorial commentary and from a few more such surprises. As it is, though, it's a pleasant book to dip into, marked by Manguel's good taste. --Gregory McNamee