William Wordsworth and the Ecology of Authorship: The Roots of Environmentalism in Nineteenth-Century Culture (Under the Sign of Nature)

In William Wordsworth and the Ecology of Authorship, Scott Hess
explores Wordsworth’s defining role in establishing what he designates as "the ecology of
authorship": a primarily middle-class, nineteenth-century conception of nature
associated with aesthetics, high culture, individualism, and nation. Instead of viewing Wordsworth
as an early ecologist, Hess places him within a context that is largely cultural and aesthetic. The
supposedly universal Wordsworthian vision of nature, Hess argues, was in this sense specifically
male, middle-class, professional, and culturally elite—factors that continue to shape the
environmental movement today.