Edward Abbey

Edward Abbey (1927-1989), American writer, best known for his work focusing on the ecology and management of the American West, particularly its deserts. Abbey first won wide acclaim for Desert Solitaire (1968), a collection of nonfiction essays that reveal his strong narrative voice and his deep passion for the environment. The essays also analyze the impact of tourism, industrialization, and government practices on the environment.

Born in Home, Pennsylvania, Abbey grew up in the Appalachian mountains of Pennsylvania and was the eldest of five children. At age 17 he traveled alone to the West, where he became enamored with the desert. After being drafted into the United States Army and serving in Italy from 1945 to 1947, Abbey received his B.A. degree in philosophy and English from the University of New Mexico in 1951. He then studied at Edinburgh University in Scotland as a Fulbright scholar. He was a Wallace Stegner Creative Writing Fellow at Stanford University in 1957, and he received his M.A. degree in philosophy from the University of New Mexico in 1960. In the late 1950s Abbey worked as a National Park Service ranger in what is now Arches National Park in Utah. His notes on this experience became the basis for Desert Solitaire. From the late 1970s until his death, Abbey lived in Tucson, Arizona, and he taught English at the University of Arizona until 1988.

Abbey’s early books reveal his lifelong interests in social criticism and anarchy. His second book, The Brave Cowboy (1956), features an individualist with anarchist tendencies. In defiance of the government practice of leasing public land to cattle ranchers in the Western states, the main character systematically cuts down the barbed-wire fencing the ranchers use to mark their leased property. Two of Abbey’s works of popular fiction, The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975) and Hayduke Lives (1989), depict a pro-environment group that sabotages equipment owned by commercial land developers. Abbey’s semiautobiographical book The Fool’s Progress: An Honest Novel (1988) features a character who returns to Appalachia in search of his personal roots. Abbey’s other works of nonfiction include Slickrock (1971) and The Journey Home (1977).

Abbey won a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction writing in 1974. He also won the 1987 Academy of Arts and Letters Creative Achievement Award but declined it because he was unable to attend the award ceremony. Instead he went on a previously planned river-rafting trip.