A Not Too Greatly Changed Eden: The Story of the Philosophers' Camp in the Adirondacks

A Not Too Greatly Changed Eden: The Story of the Philosophers' Camp in the Adirondacks

by James Schlett
A Not Too Greatly Changed Eden: The Story of the Philosophers' Camp in the Adirondacks

A Not Too Greatly Changed Eden: The Story of the Philosophers' Camp in the Adirondacks

by James Schlett

Paperback(Reprint)

$21.95 
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Overview

In August 1858, William James Stillman, a painter and founding editor of the acclaimed but short-lived art journal The Crayon, organized a camping expedition for some of America's preeminent intellectuals to Follensby Pond in the Adirondacks. Dubbed the "Philosophers’ Camp," the trip included the Swiss American scientist and Harvard College professor Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz, the Republican lawyer and future U.S. attorney general Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, the Cambridge poet James Russell Lowell, and the transcendental philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, who would later pen a poem about the experience. News that these cultured men were living like "Sacs and Sioux" in the wilderness appeared in newspapers across the nation and helped fuel a widespread interest in exploring the Adirondacks.In this book, James Schlett recounts the story of the Philosophers’ Camp, from the lives and careers of—and friendships and frictions among—the participants to the extensive preparations for the expedition and the several-day encampment to its lasting legacy. Schlett’s account is a sweeping tale that provides vistas of the dramatically changing landscapes of the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century. As he relates, the scholars later formed an Adirondack Club that set out to establish a permanent encampment at nearby Ampersand Pond. Their plans, however, were dashed amid the outbreak of the Civil War and the advancement of civilization into a wilderness that Stillman described as "a not too greatly changed Eden." But the Adirondacks were indeed changing.When Stillman returned to the site of the Philosophers’ Camp in 1884, he found the woods around Follensby had been disfigured by tourists. Development, industrialization, and commercialization had transformed the Adirondack wilderness as they would nearly every other aspect of the American landscape. Such devastation would later inspire conservationists to establish Adirondack Park in 1892. At the close of the book, Schlett looks at the preservation of Follensby Pond, now protected by the Nature Conservancy, and the camp site’s potential integration into the Adirondack Forest Preserve.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781501704451
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Publication date: 05/03/2016
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 272
Sales rank: 317,469
Product dimensions: 6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

James Schlett is an award-winning journalist whose feature and business writing has been recognized by the New York Newspaper Publishers Association and the New York State Associated Press Association. He lives in Rotterdam, N.Y.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Amid the RuinsPart I. Nature and Society
1. Path to the Adirondacks
2. Turning Points
3. The Crayon
4. "Adieu to the World"
5. The Artist Reborn
6. Trial Run
7. The Procession to the PinesPart II. The Camp and Club
8. Acclimating to the Wild
9. The Worthy Crew Chaucer Never Had
10. Ampersand
[Color Plates]
11. The Inaugural MeetingPart III. Campfire Lore
12. War
13. Peace
14. The Ravages of Modern Improvement
15. The Old America and the NewConclusion: The Story RebornPostscriptNotes
Select Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Paul Schneider

A Not Too Greatly Changed Eden is a definitive account of the Philosophers' Camp that will be of great value to those interested in Adirondack and regional history.

Philip F. Gura

In A Not Too Greatly Changed Eden, James Schlett takes a fascinating and iconic event in New York State and American cultural history and enlightens us about what happened with the motley crew of artists, philosophers, and thinkers who visited the Adirondacks in 1858. I learned much from this book and recommend it to other readers in a variety of fields, including American literature and art, New York history, and environmental history.

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