Abstract
Travel north out of Washington, DC, on New Hampshire Avenue. After passing under the Capitol Beltway, turn left onto Quaint Acres Drive, and then take the next left onto Berwick Road. At 11701 Berwick Road, on a large corner lot, sits a modest brick house much like the others in the neighborhood.
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Notes
- 1.
The listing for the house is at http://www.nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com/md/Montgomery/state.html.
- 2.
William O. Douglas, quoted in: Linda Lear, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1997), 419.
- 3.
Quoted in Lear, Rachel Carson, 174.
- 4.
Rachel Carson, quoted in: Mark Hamilton Lytle, The Gentle Subversive: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and the Rise of the Environment Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 15.
- 5.
Ibid.
- 6.
Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder (New York: Harper & Row, 1985), 45.
- 7.
Carson, quoted in Lear, Rachel Carson, 42.
- 8.
Carson, quoted in: Ginger Wadsworth, Rachel Carson: Voice for the Earth (Minneapolis, MN: Lernere Publications Company, 1992), 24.
- 9.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Locksley Hall,” ll. 192–94. In The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 3rd ed., vol. 2 (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1974).
- 10.
Carson, quoted in Lear, Rachel Carson, 40.
- 11.
Ibid., 60.
- 12.
Elmer Higgins, quoted in Wadsworth, 33.
- 13.
Excerpt from The Edge of the Sea, reprinted in: Paul Brooks, Rachel Carson at Work: The House of Life (Boston: G. K. Hall & Company, 1985), 165.
- 14.
This description of the transformation of “Undersea” from a failed government draft to a successful national magazine article comes from Lear, Rachel Carson, 81–88.
- 15.
Carson, quoted in Lear, Rachel Carson, 88.
- 16.
Value of royalties from Lear, Rachel Carson, 105. Sources give different figures for the initial sales of Under the Sea Wind, depending on the date chosen to report sales, but all agree that the total sales were far less than the original printing of 2,000 copies.
- 17.
Carson, quoted in Wadsworth, 40.
- 18.
Briggs, quoted in Lear, Rachel Carson, 133.
- 19.
Carson, quoted in Lear, Rachel Carson, 145.
- 20.
Sources differ on how long the book was in first place on the best-seller list. The New York Times, which should be the authoritative source for its own listings, in its obituary of Rachel Carson on April 15, 1964, stated that it was number one for thirty-nine weeks.
- 21.
Cited in Wadsworth, 58.
- 22.
Carson, quoted in Lear, Rachel Carson, 233.
- 23.
Ibid., 134.
- 24.
Ibid., 245.
- 25.
Ibid., 160.
- 26.
Carson, quoted in Wadsworth, 60.
- 27.
Carson, quoted in Lear, Rachel Carson, 238.
- 28.
Carson, quoted in Lytle, 118.
- 29.
Carson, quoted in Wadsworth, 45.
- 30.
Carson, quoted in: Linda Lear, ed., Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998), 228.
- 31.
Huckins, quoted in Lear, Rachel Carson, 315.
- 32.
Carson, quoted in Lear, Rachel Carson, 362.
- 33.
Ibid., 361–62.
- 34.
Ibid., 340.
- 35.
Ibid., 338.
- 36.
Ibid., 336.
- 37.
Discussion of the titling process for Silent Spring can be found in Lear, Rachel Carson, 389, and in Lytle, 157.
- 38.
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (New York: Crest Book edition, 1964; first published by Houghton Mifflin, 1962), 13–15.
- 39.
President Kennedy, in an August 1962 press conference, was asked if the government was concerned about pesticides. He responded that it was, “particularly since the publication of Miss Carson’s book.” (Quoted in Lytle, 176.)
- 40.
Carson, Silent Spring, 22.
- 41.
Quoted in Lear, Rachel Carson, 409.
- 42.
Quoted in Lytle, 178.
- 43.
“The Desolate Year” (pamphlet issued by the Monsanto Company, 1963), quoted in: Priscilla Coit Murphy, What a Book Can Do: The Publication and Reception of Silent Spring (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005), 100.
- 44.
Quoted in the New York Times obituary of Rachel Carson, April 15, 1964. Accounts differ about the role of White-Stevens, whether he was employed by the industry or not, whether he was paid for his efforts or not.
- 45.
The CBS program is discussed in Lytle, 179–83, and in Lear, Rachel Carson, 143–50.
- 46.
Robert White-Stevens, quoted in Lear, Rachel Carson, 449.
- 47.
Carson, quoted in Lear, Rachel Carson, 450.
- 48.
Eric Sevareid, quoted in Lear, Rachel Carson, 452.
- 49.
Abraham Ribicoff, quoted in Lytle, 187.
- 50.
The exact number of copies of Silent Spring that have been sold is not public information.
- 51.
Excerpt from an essay Rachel Carson wrote to accompany a bibliography for the National Council of Teachers of English, which appeared in 1956. The section included here is quoted in Lear, Lost Woods, 165–66.
- 52.
Carson, quoted in Lear, Rachel Carson, 442.
- 53.
Carson, letter to Dorothy Freeman, quoted in Lear, Lost Woods, 247.
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© 2017 Larry A. Nielsen
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Carson, R. (2017). The Lady Who Started All This. In: Nature’s Allies. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-797-1_5
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