Shows how travel writing helped shape major 19th-century naturalists' perceptions of ecological relationships and contributed to the development of ecological thought.

Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), Charles Darwin (1809–1882), and Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) are renowned for shaping ecological thought. Less widely known is how their travel writings formed a chain of literary and scientific influence, inspiring new ways of exploring, researching, and writing about the natural world. Travelling Ecology argues that indeed travel writing played a major role in the development of 19th-century ecological thought.

Through close readings of scenes from the three travelogues, Engberg draws on recent ecocritical and narratological approaches to examine the relationship between literary form, material environments, and environmental perception. First, by tracing changes in the representation of ecological relationships, she shows how travelling and narrating their journeys enabled Humboldt, Darwin, and Haeckel to attend to and creatively engage with the environments they encountered. Second, through a historical comparison of their travelogues, she demonstrates how scenes depicting ecological relationships developed intertextually from one author to the next.

Ultimately, Travelling Ecology uncovers connections and transformations in Humboldt's, Darwin's, and Haeckel's representations of the natural world. In doing so, it offers new perspectives on both the history of science and travel writing.

Isabella Maria Engberg is a postdoctoral researcher based in Germany whose research interests include 19th-century English and German literature, ecocriticism, and the intersections between literature and the natural sciences, particularly literary engagements with scientific theories of the origins of life. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland.