Loren Eiseley has been named, perhaps blasphemously, a “modern Thoreau” (Wentz 1984). His job as an author was to bring complicated, abstract topics to the public, and to explain these topics in a manner that was pleasing to read.
Early Life
Loren Corey Eiseley was born just outside of Lincoln, Nebraska, into a broken family. His father was a hardware salesman and an amateur Shakespearean actor, and his mother (Daisy) had lost her hearing at a young age; she would communicate with her son by thumping on the wooden floors of their home. The two had a distant relationship, if any, for the extent of Daisy’s life.
Eiseley’s half-brother gave him his first copy of Robinson Crusoe, with which he taught himself to read (Brill). This led to a voracious appetite for literature; young Eiseley would frequent the Natural History Museum and public library. With the help of his father’s introduction to beautiful language and spoken word, Eiseley learned quickly that he was interested in being a nature writer.
Education
The journey to a degree was a long one for Eiseley. After enrolling at the University of Nebraska in 1925, he was fraught with a serious of familial crises, including the death of his father and he himself contracting tuberculosis, he finally received a BS Degree in English and Geology/Anthropology (Brill). He then went on to earn his Masters and PhD in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania, and finally his post-doctoral work at Columbia University.
Occupations
Eiseley taught at the University of Kansas and at Oberlin College, then returned to teach at the University of Pennsylvania in 1949, at which he was a Professor of Anthropology for fourteen years, curator at the University Museum and provost for thirty years, and Professor of Anthropology and History of Science for three (Brill; Brittanica).
He also served as consultant to museums, foundations, and U.S. governmental organizations. He was the host and narrator for a television series “Animal Secrets” from 1966-7, and earned a copious amount of honorary degrees, as well as memberships of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Brittanica).
The rise of Eiseley’s literary career began when Scientific American published his first popular essay, titled “The Folsum Mystery” in 1942 (Brill). The piece featured the major connections between the history of civilization and modern man’s relationship to the natural world. This would go on to be the central theme in many of Eiseley’s major works, namely one of his first and best known books, called The Immense Journey. Published in 1946, this collection of essays held many of its origins in Eiseley’s early life in Nebraska.
Eiseley’s Work and Features
Eiseley’s publications are centered around fossils dating in and around the Pleistocene Epoch, and the extinction of Ice Age fauna (Brittanica). His work on evolution and its implications for humanity did not come without criticism. He published more than a dozen books, including an autobiography titled All The Strange Hours, just two years before his death in 1977.
A famous work of Eiseley’s, The Firmament of Time, demonstrates how he wanted to make complex subjects understandable to the common reader. He won the 1961 John Burroughs medal for best publication in the field of nature writing. In his book, The American Spirituality of Loren Eiseley, Richard E. Wentz comments on Eiseley’s book by saying, “using narrative, … he takes us with him on a personal visit” (Wentz, 1984). The main focal point of Eiseley’s book is on nature and cosmology.
Fox at the Wood’s Edge by Gale E. Christianson is a biography of Loren Eiseley, which talks about six lectures that Eiseley delivered to students at the University of Cincinnati while he was a visiting professor of the philosophy of science. Eis stated, “the splendors of the firmament of time may be eclipsed, but are extinguished not…” (Christianson, p. 341). Christianson says that Eiseley writes more like a poet than historian of science. It then says, “His message is a simple one: for all its staggering achievements, Western science has done little to create better, more responsible beings” (Christianson, p. 341). This is talking about how Eiseley believed that the modern man ceased to have a conscience.
Citations
Christanson, Gale E., ‘Fox at the Woods Edge: A Biography of Loren Eiseley’. New York: H. Holt, 1990. Print.
Eiseley, Loren C. ‘The Firmament of Time’. New York: Atheneum, 1960. Print.
Wentz, Richard E., “the American Spirituality of Loren Eiseley” ‘Christian Century’, April 25, 1984.
Environmental and Biological Non-fiction 