Edward James Hughes was an English poet, translator, and children's writer. Critics frequently rank him as one of the best poets of his generation and one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1984 and held the office until his death. In 2008, The Times ranked Hughes fourth on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
The pastoral genre of literature, art, or music depicts an idealised form of the shepherd's lifestyle – herding livestock around open areas of land according to the seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture. The target audience is typically an urban one. A pastoral is a work of this genre. A piece of music in the genre is usually referred to as a pastorale.
Green World is a literary concept defined by the critic Northrop Frye in his book Anatomy of Criticism (1957). Frye defines this term using Shakespeare's romantic comedies as the foundation. In Anatomy of Criticism, Frye describes the Green World as "the archetypal function of literature in visualizing the world of desire, not as an escape from "reality," but as the genuine form of the world that human life tries to imitate." The plots of these comedies often follow the formula of action starting in the normal world and then progressing to an alternate one in which the conflict is resolved before returning to the normal world. The plot of the Shakespearean romantic comedy is built upon the tradition established by the medieval "season ritual-play," the plots of which thematically deal with the triumph of love over the wasteland. The concept of the Green World is used to contrast the civilized world of man with the often harsh natural world.
Sir Andrew Jonathan Bate, is a British academic, biographer, critic, broadcaster, scholar, and occasional novelist, playwright and poet. He specializes in Shakespeare, Romanticism and ecocriticism. He is Regents Professor of Literature and Foundation Professor of Environmental Humanities in a joint appointment in the Department of English in The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the School of Sustainability in the Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University, as well as a Senior Research Fellow at Worcester College, Oxford, where he holds the title of Professor of English Literature. Bate was Provost of Worcester College from 2011 to 2019. From 2017 to 2019 he was Gresham Professor of Rhetoric in the City of London. He was knighted in 2015 for services to literary scholarship and higher education. He is also Chair of the Hawthornden Foundation.
Helen M. Tiffin is an adjunct professor of English at the University of Wollongong, Australia, and an influential writer in post-colonial theory and literary studies.
Ecocriticism is the study of literature and ecology from an interdisciplinary point of view, where literature scholars analyze texts that illustrate environmental concerns and examine the various ways literature treats the subject of nature. It was first originated by Joseph Meeker as an idea called "literary ecology" in his The Comedy of Survival: Studies in Literary Ecology (1972).
"The Garden" is a widely anthologized poem by the seventeenth-century English poet, Andrew Marvell. The poem was first published posthumously in Miscellaneous Poems (1681). “The Garden” is one of several poems by Marvell to feature gardens, including his “Nymph Complaining for the Death her Fawn,” “The Mower Against Gardens,” and “Upon Appleton House.”
John Tallmadge is an American author and essayist on issues related to nature and culture. He is in private practice as an educational and literary consultant after a career in higher education, most recently as a core professor of Literature and Environmental Studies at Union Institute and University in Cincinnati, Ohio. He served as president of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) and director of the Orion Society. He is a U.S. Army veteran.
Debjani Chatterjee MBE is an Indian-born British poet and writer. She lives in Sheffield, England.
Greta Gaard is an ecofeminist writer, scholar, activist, and documentary filmmaker. Gaard's academic work in the realms of ecocriticism and ecocomposition is widely cited by scholars in the disciplines of composition and literary criticism. Her theoretical work extending ecofeminist thought into queer theory, queer ecology, vegetarianism, and animal liberation has been influential within women's studies. A cofounder of the Minnesota Green Party, Gaard documented the transition of the U.S. Green movement into the Green Party of the United States in her book, Ecological Politics. She is currently a professor of English at University of Wisconsin-River Falls and a community faculty member in Women's Studies at Metropolitan State University, Twin Cities.
David Morley is a British poet, professor, and ecologist. His best-selling textbook The Cambridge Introduction to Creative Writing has been translated into many languages. His major poetry collections include FURY, Scientific Papers, The Invisible Kings, Enchantment, The Gypsy and the Poet, and The Magic of What's There are published by Carcanet Press. The Invisible Gift: Selected Poems was published by Carcanet and won The Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. He was awarded a Cholmondeley Award by The Society of Authors for his body of work and contribution to poetry. He is a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature. FURY published in August 2020 was a Poetry Book Society Choice and shortlisted for The Forward Prize for Best Collection. Passion is published by Carcanet Press in 2025.
Brooks Ashton Nichols is the Walter E. Beach ’56 Distinguished Chair Emeritus in Sustainable Studies and Professor of English Language and Literature Emeritus at Dickinson College. His interests are in literature, contemporary ecocriticism, Romanticism, and nature writing. Nichols taught courses in Romanticism, 19th century literature, literature and the environment, and nature writing. He is especially well-known for his study of James Joyce's literary concept of "epiphany," his definition of Romantic natural histories, and his coinage of the phrase "Urbanatural roosting," an idea which links urban with natural modes of existence and argues for ways of living more lightly on the earth, for inhabiting our planet the way animals do, by altering our environments without harming those same environments.
John Strachan is a literary critic, historian and poet, Professor of English and Pro Vice-Chancellor at Bath Spa University, England. Strachan is the current Director of GuildHE Research, Co-Chair of the Charles Lamb Society and an Ambassador for the Association of Commonwealth Universities. He is Associate Editor of the Oxford Companion to English Literature. Strachan has previously held professorships at Northumbria University and the University of Sunderland. Educated at the University of Southampton (BA) and Wolfson College, Oxford. Strachan specialises in Romanticism, especially late Georgian comic writing (he is the editor of British Satire 1785-1840 and Parodies of the Romantic Age, and the relationship between advertising and literature. He has published two volumes of poetry and, with Richard Terry, is author of a successful text book,Poetry, which was published in 2000 by Edinburgh University Press. Strachan has also published numerous articles in the fields of history, sport studies, poetry, and Irish culture. In 2013 he collaborated with numerous artists and poets to create Their Colours and their Forms: Artists' Responses to Wordsworth, which included some of his own poetry. He lives in Bath, Somerset. As an author, he is widely held in libraries worldwide.
Anthony James Carrigan was a British academic noted for his pioneering work in combining the theoretical paradigms of postcolonialism and environmental studies.
Judith Tucker was a British artist and academic. She completed a BA in Fine Arts at the Ruskin School of Art, St Anne's College, Oxford, (1978–81) an MA in Fine Arts (1997–98) and a PhD in Fine Arts at the University of Leeds (1999–2002). Tucker is co-convenor of LAND2, a research network of artists associated with higher education who are concerned with radical approaches to landscape with a particular focus on memory, place and identity. She exhibits regularly in the UK and Europe. Between 2003 and 2006, Tucker was an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Research Fellow in the Creative and Performing Arts.
Ecofiction is the branch of literature that encompasses nature or environment-oriented works of fiction. While this super genre's roots are seen in classic, pastoral, magical realism, animal metamorphoses, science fiction, and other genres, the term ecofiction did not become popular until the 1960s when various movements created the platform for an explosion of environmental and nature literature, which also inspired ecocriticism. Ecocriticism is the study of literature and the environment from an interdisciplinary point of view, where literature scholars analyze texts that illustrate environmental concerns and examine the various ways literature treats the subject of nature. Environmentalists have claimed that the human relationship with the ecosystem often went unremarked in earlier literature.
Joni Adamson is an American literary and cultural theorist. She is considered one of the main proponents of environmental justice and environmental literary criticism, or Ecocriticism. She is a professor of the environmental humanities and senior sustainability scholar at Arizona State University in Arizona. In 2012–13, she served as president of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE), the primary professional organization for environmental literary critics. From 1999 to 2010, she founded and led the Environment and Culture Caucus of the American Studies Association (ASA-ECC).
Michael P. Branch is an ecocritic, writer, and humorist with over three hundred publications, including work in The Best American Essays, The Best American Science and Nature Writing and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. An important member of the environmental and writing community, Western American Literature has described him as part of the "enduring procession of outdoor journalists."
Catherine Elizabeth Rigby is a scholar in the interdisciplinary field of environmental humanities.
Mpalive-Hangson Msiska is a Malawian academic resident in London, England. He is a Reader Emeritus in English and Humanities at Birkbeck College, University of London, with research and teaching interests in critical and cultural theory as well as postcolonial literature, including African literature, Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe being notable subjects of his writing.
