Edwin Way Teale: a biographical sketch
By Steve Grant
One of the pre-eminent 20th-century nature writers in the United States, Edwin Way Teale (1899-1980) combined a deep understanding of the natural world with engaging, accessible prose that endeared him to readers with a love of the outdoors.
For the last 21 years of his life, Teale and his wife, Nellie, lived in a Cape-style farmhouse built in 1806 in Hampton, Ct. From that 130-acre, mostly-wooded property, which the couple named Trail Wood, Teale wrote some of his most famous books, including “A Naturalist Buys an Old Farm, which was a national best-seller in 1974, and “Wandering Through Winter,” the concluding volume in his American Seasons series, which won a Pulitzer Prize.
Teale was born in Joliet, Illinois, the son of Oliver Cromwell Teale and Clara Louise Way Teale. His interest in nature developed at an early age, partly because of summers spent with his grandparents on their farm in the Indiana dune country. He graduated with a B. A. in English literature from Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, in 1922. In 1923 he married Nellie Imogene Donovan, who he met while at Earlham. A year later they moved to New York where Teale began studies for a M. A., at Columbia University, which he received in 1926.
For more than a decade he worked full time as a writer for Popular Science. But on October 16, 1941, Teale left magazine writing to concentrate on books. From then on the couple celebrated October 16 as their own independence day.
For nearly two decades they lived in Baldwin, N. Y., on Long Island, but were increasingly uncomfortable as suburbia washed over the community. Their search for a more rural place to live, a place that would be within a day’s drive of Manhattan, was recounted in detail in "A Naturalist Buys an Old Farm." It ended with their discovery of the old farmhouse and land off Kenyon Road in Hampton, a town in eastern Connecticut that to this day remains rural and quiet.
The Teales spent two decades exploring every nook of their property, documenting each fern, wildflower, bird, tree and insect that could be found on the property, which includes brooks and ponds, woods and meadows. Their experiences were often recounted in Teale's books.
While "A Naturalist Buys an Old Farm" was a big seller late in life for Teale, his American Seasons series may be his most enduring literary legacy. In four books published between 1951 and 1965, Teale recounted the couple's experiences traveling by car throughout the United States, one three-month journey for each season.
They visited national parks and monuments, remote and unusual habitats, marshes, rivers, lakes, deserts, and ancient forests. In fact, they likely explored every kind of ecosystem found in the lower 48 states, often meeting with prominent scientists and naturalists as they went. Teale researched each book so meticulously that his itinerary for the four trips constitutes a virtual nature lover's checklist of special places to see throughout the country.
In "Autumn Across America," Teale at one point complains of people who regard the natural world as no more than a natural resource to be exploited for mankind's profit.
"Whoever stimulates a wider appreciation of nature, a wider understanding of nature, a wider love of nature for its own sake accomplishes no small thing. For from these is formed the enduring component of the conservation movement," he wrote. It was during those years that Teale wrote the American Seasons that the environmental movement of the late 20th Century emerged, fueled in part by writers like Teale and Rachel Carson, whose book "Silent Spring," exposing the damage done by the pesticide DDT, touched off a public clamor for environmental protection.
Each volume of the American Seasons series is dedicated to their only child, David, a U. S. Army enlistee who was killed in action in Germany.
Shortly before he died, Teale donated his manuscripts, notes and papers to the University of Connecticut libraries, where they are regarded as a valuable primary source in understanding the nation's growing interest in the environment during the post-World War II years. In all, he wrote 32 books, according to the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center at the university.
The Teales also agreed before he died that they would donate Trail Wood to the Connecticut Audubon Society upon her death, which came in 1993. The property is formally known today as Trail Wood: the Edwin Way Teale Memorial Sanctuary of the Connecticut Audubon Society. Visitors can walk the miles of trails on the property and at times visit the homestead and Teale’s writing cabin.
Trail Wood today is a place to saunter. Bring along the field guides, watch the phoebes that delighted the Teales, admire the heath asters that bloom in the fall. “For us, an event of the season, each year, is the coming of these shining mounds of frosty white to the slope that descends from the house to the pond,” Teale wrote. “So dense are the masses of its blooms that the plants often seem mounded over with soft new-fallen snow.”
“A Naturalist Buys and Old Farm,” Teale’s book about his rural property in Hampton, CT, was a national best-seller in the 1970s.