Reading Tree in Nature's Nation: Toward a Field Guide to Sylvan Literacy in the Nineteenth-Century United States.

SYMBOLISM of trees; POPULAR culture; TREES in literature; TREES in art; 19TH century American literature -- History & criticism; NINETEENTH century; HISTORY; HISTORY of popular culture

This essay considers how trees were viewed in popular culture in the United States during the nineteenth century using examples of trees in literature, in art, in cartoons and caricatures, and in the press. It considers trees as symbols, as viewed in economics as lumber, as timber, and as part of forests and forestry. Works about trees by authors including Oliver Wendell Holmes, William Cullen Bryant, and Ralph Waldo Emerson are considered.