"Animals are stylized characters in a kind of old saga - stylized because even the most acute of them have little leeway as they play out their parts.""City people try to buy time as a rule, when they can, whereas country people are prepared to kill time, although both try to cherish in their mind's eye the notion of a better life ahead.""Country people do not behave as if they think life is short; they live on the principle that it is long, and savor variations of the kind best appreciated if most days are the same.""In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn't merely try to train him to be semi-human. The point of it is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog.""Land of opportunity, land for the huddled masses where would the opportunity have been without the genocide of those Old Guard, bristling Indian tribes?""Like a kick in the butt, the force of events wakes slumberous talents.""Men greet each other with a sock on the arm, women with a hug, and the hug wears better in the long run.""The question of whether it's God's green earth is not at center stage, except in the sense that if so, one is reminded with some regularity that He may be dying."
Hoagland joined the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in the summers of 1951 and 1952. He helped to tend the big cats and later sold a novel about this experience, Cat Man (1955), before graduating from Harvard in 1954. After serving two years in the Army, he published The Circle Home (1960), a novel about boxing, before going on the first of nine trips to Alaska and British Columbia.
During the 1970s, he made the first two of his five trips to Africa. After receiving two Guggenheim Fellowships, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1982. He has taught at The New School, Rutgers, Sarah Lawrence, CUNY, the University of Iowa, U.C. Davis, Columbia University, Beloit College, and Brown. In 2005, Hoagland retired from a teaching position at Bennington College in Vermont. Since 1968, he has focused most of his energies on Montaigne-type essays.
According to the Dictionary of Literary Biography, "Hoagland's love of solitude and silent observation of wildlife rather than social conversation may have resulted from a severe stammer that still persists. This stammer has, according to Hoagland himself, influenced how he writes: 'Words are spoken at considerable cost to me, so a great value is placed on each one. That has had some effect on me as a writer. As a child, since I couldn't talk to people, I became close to animals. I became an observer, and in all my books, even the novels, witnessing things is what counts.' His reluctance to speak may account for his desire to write--and be read--and for the sensitive visual, tactile, and olfactory images in his writings."
The Circle Home, Thomas Y. Crowell, 1960; Avon, 1977; Lyons Press, 2003
The Peacock’s Tail, McGraw-Hill, 1965
Notes from the Century Before: A Journal from British Columbia, Random House, 1969; Ballantine, 1972; North Point Press, 1982; Sierra Club Books, 1995; Modern Library, 2002
The Courage of Turtles, Random House, 1971; Warner, 1974; North Point Press, 1985; Lyons & Burford, 1993
Walking the Dead Diamond River, Random House, 1973; Warner, 1974; North Point Press, 1985; Lyons & Burford, 1993
The Moose on the Wall, Barrie & Jenkins, 1974
Red Wolves and Black Bears, Random House, 1976; Penguin, 1983; Lyons & Burford, 1995
African Calliope: A Journey to the Sudan, Random House, 1979; Penguin, 1981; Lyons & Burford, 1995
The Edward Hoagland Reader, Random House, 1979; Vintage, 1981
The Tugman’s Passage, Random House, 1982; Penguin, 1983; Lyons & Burford, 1995
“Howling Back at the Wolves,” Saturday Review, December 1972
“Wall Maps and Woodpeckers,” The Village Voice, January 25, 1973
“Fred King on the Allagash,” Audience, January-February 1973
“Mountain Towers,” The Village Voice, February 15, 1973
“At Pinkham Notch,” The Village Voice, March 15, 1973
“Wildlands in Vermont,” The Village Voice, March 22, 1973
“In a Lair with a Bear,” Sports Illustrated, March 26, 1973
“Tricks, Innocence, Pathos, Perfection,” The Village Voice, May 10, 1973
“The Young Must Do the Healing,” New York Times Magazine, June 10, 1973
“Other Lives,” Harper’s, July 1973
“A Run of Bad Luck,” Newsweek, July 30, 1973
“Writing Wild,” New York Times Book Review, September 23, 1973
“That Gorgeous Great Novelist,” The Village Voice, November 15, 1973
“But Where Is Home,” New York Times Book Review, December 23, 1973
“A Mountain with a Wolf on It,” Sports Illustrated, January 14, 1974
“Where Have All the Heroes Gone,” New York Times Magazine, March 10, 1974
“Where the Action Is,” New York Times Book Review, October 13, 1974
“Nine Home Truths about Writing,” The Village Voice, January 20, 1975
“The Tug of Life at the End of the Leash,” Harper’s, February 1975
“Big Frog, Very Small Pond,” Sports Illustrated, March 3, 1975
“The Survival of the Newt,” New York Times Magazine, July 27, 1975
“Apocalypse Enough,” Not Man Apart, July 1975
“A Paradox among Us,” Harper’s, January 1976
“Southern Mansions,” Travel & Leisure, February 1976
“What I Think, What I Am,” New York Times Book Review, June 27, 1976
“Cairo Observed,” Harper’s, June 1976
“At Large in East Africa,” Harper’s, August 1976
“The Fragile Writer,” New York Times Book Review, December 12, 1976
“The Ridge-Slope Fox and the Knife-Thrower,” Harper’s, January 1977
“Do Writers Stay Home,” New York Times Book Review, May 22, 1977
“Without American Express,” New York Times Book Review, June 4, 1978
“Into Eritrea: Africa’s Red Sea War,” Harper’s, July 1978
“Unsilent Spring,” The Nation, May 26, 1979
“Gabriel, Who Wanted to Know,” The New England Review, Summer 1979
“Tugs,” Harper’s, December 1979
“Johnny Appleseed,” American Heritage, December-January 1979
“Being Between Books,” New York Times Book Review, October 28, 1979
“December Song,” The Nation, December 6, 1980
“America Was Promises (Still),” The Nation, February 21, 1981
“Making of a Writer,” New York Times Book Review, October 4, 1981
“Gods, Masks, and Horses,” Vanity Fair, July 1983
“Anchorage,” Vanity Fair, October 1983
“Up the Black to Chalkyitsik,” House and Garden, June 1984
“Hail the Anhinga,” The Nation, June 9, 1984
“Memories of Circuses Past,” The Nation, March 9, 1985
“In Okefenokee,” National Geographic Traveler, Spring 1985
“Nectar Feeding,” The Nation, July 20, 1985
“In Praise of John Muir,” Antaeus, Autumn 1986
“Three Trains Across Canada,” Travel & Leisure, March 1987
“Up with Spring,” The Nation, June 6, 1987
“Treasured Places,” Life, July 1987
“Summer Skunks,” The Nation, August 29, 1987
“Christmases Past,” The Nation, December 26, 1987
“Heaven and Nature,” Harper’s, March 1988
“Arabia Felix,” Interview magazine, May 1988
“The Indispensable Thoreau,” American Heritage, July 1988
“Learning to Eat Soup,” Antaeus, Autumn 1988
“The Hunger in Manhattan Life,” Harper’s, June 1989
“Jubilant Spring,” The Nation, June 19, 1989
“A World Worth Saving,” Life, October 1989
“O Wyoming,” Outside, October 1989
“Tolstoyan Tide,” The Nation, May 14, 1990
“Shh, Our Writers Are Sleeping,” Esquire, July 1990
“On Getting One’s Footing” (reprinted from “Anxious Dreams,” Manchester Guardian, * January 20), Harper’s, August 1990
“Roadless Regions,” Literary Outtakes, September 1990
“Passing Views,” Harper’s, January 1991
“Good Trips, Bad Trips,” Outside, April 1991
“The Best Idea,” Life, May 1991
“Spring Medley,” The Nation, June 10, 1991
“Holy Fools,” The Nation, September 16, 1991
“Everybody Comes to Belize,” Outside, February 1992
“Meat for the Old Man,” Outside, May 1992
“Christmas Observed,” New York Times Magazine, December 20, 1992
“To the Point,” Harper’s, March 1993
“Skin and Bones,” The Nation, May 3, 1993
“The Unknown Thoreau,” The Nation, June 7, 1993
“Nature’s Seesaw,” Vermont, May 1994 (also in Land’s End Catalogue, September 1993)
“All This Good World,” Manoa, June 1994
“Strange Perfume,” Esquire, June 1994
“The View from 61,” New York Times Magazine, November 27, 1994
“Brightness Visible,” Harper’s, January 1995
“Surge Time at the Bottom of the Earth,” Outside, March 1995
“Scenes from a Forty-Year War,” The Nation, April 10, 1995
“Like a Saul Bellow Character,” Salmagundi, Spring 1995
“Stepping Back,” New York Times Magazine, November 12, 1995
“Books that Need Authors,” The Nation, November 13, 1995
“The Daring Art of Rockwell Kent,” Civilization, January 1996
“Dying Argots,” Harper’s, January 1996
“Running Mates,” Hungry Mind Review, November 1996 (also Spring 1999)
“Generational Pioneer,” New York Times Magazine, December 8, 1996
“A Last Look Around,” Civilization, February 1997
“The Peaceable Kingdom,” Preservation, March 1997 (also in Vermont, June 1999)
“Wild Things,” Granta, Spring 1997
“Samos, Reflections on Love, and Love Lost, On a Greek Island,” Islands, June 1997
“Henry James and Porky Pig,” The Nation, June 30, 1997
“The Sage of Selborne,” The Yale Review, July 1997
“Spring Comes to the Kingdom,” Vermont Woodlands, Spring 1998
“I Can See,” Granta, Summer 1998
“India,” River City, Summer 1998
“Vermont Journal,” American Scholar, Summer 1998
“Vermont: Suite of Seasons,” National Geographic, September 1998
“Lost Between Burma and Tibet,” Outside, October 1998
Craft and Obsession: An Interview with Edward Hoagland," The Hungry Mind Review, Spring 1999
“On the Lure of Water,” Sierra, May 1999
“Writers Afoot,” American Scholar, Summer 1999
“Earth’s Eye,” Northern Woodlands, Autumn 1999
“That Sense of Falling,” Preservation, October 1999
“Writers Afoot,” Harper’s, October 1999
“Calliope Times,” The New Yorker, May 22, 2000
“Natural Excursions,” Orion, Summer 2000
“Fire,” American Scholar, Autumn 2000
“Natural Light,” Harper’s, October 2000
“Vermont’s Civil Union,” Washington Post, late October 2000
“Secrets of the Stutter,” U.S. News and World Report, April 2, 2001
“Smirko, Smirko, Smirko!” Yankee, June 2001
“Two Kinds of People,” Worth, November 2001
“Circus Music,” Harper’s, February 2002
“Ansel Adams at 100,” Aperture, Spring 2002
“John Muir’s Alaskan Rhapsody,” American Scholar, Spring 2002
“Blind Faith,” Food and Wine, April 2002
“1776 and All That,” The Nation, July 22, 2002
“Diaries,” The Paris Review, Summer 2002
“The Circus of Dr. Lao,” Post Road, Fall 2002
“Not Even the Giant Squid,” Harper’s, November 2002
“Sex and the River Styx,” Harper’s, January 2003
“The American Dissident,” Harper’s, August 2003
“Immersion Teaching,” Chronicle of Higher Education, February 13, 2004
“Small Silences,” Harper’s, July 2004
“Journals,” American Scholar, Autumn 2004
“The Glue Is Gone,” American Scholar, Winter 2005
“Miles from Nowhere,” American Scholar, Summer 2006
“Endgame: Meditations on a Diminishing World,” Harper's, June 2007
"Children Are Diamonds," Portland, Fall 2007
"The Broken Balance," The American Scholar, Spring 2008
"A Country for Old Men," The American Scholar, Winter 2009
"Curtain Calls," Harper's, March 2009
"China's Mystic Waters," National Geographic, March 2009
"Journals '04, '05," The Seattle Review, Fall 2009
"Barley and Yaks," Orion, November 2009
"Last Call — Old Age and the End of Nature," Harper's, May 2010
"Spaced Out in the City," American Scholar, Summer 2010
Other Essays
Commencing from March 12, 1979, fifty-plus unsigned editorials in The New York Times: “The Price of Fur,” “In the Spring,” “Hang-ups,” “Mountain House,” etc., to 1989
Pequod, Winter 1986
New England Monthly, May 1987
Yankee Homes, September 1989
Manchester Guardian, January 20, 1990; August 12, 1990; March 31, 1991
Anchorage Daily News, June 28, 1992
Vermont, June 1994
The New York Times, January 11, 1986; June 15, 1991; October 5, 1993; May 13, 1995
Rolling Stone, May 28, 1998
Manoa, June 1999
Portland Magazine (Oregon), Summer 1996; Winter 1996; Winter 1997; Spring 2002
Book Reviews
In The New York Times Book Review, May 9, 1971; June 13, 1971; February 6, 1972; October 7, 1973; October 21, 1973; December 2, 1973; April 14, 1974; May 19, 1974; “City Walking,” June 1, 1975; June 22, 1975; November 9, 1975; December 7, 1975; April 11, 1976; April 18, 1976; May 9, 1976; August 15, 1976; September 5, 1976; November 14, 1976; January 9, 1977; June 19, 1977; August 14, 1977; September 11, 1977; November 27, 1977; December 11, 1977; November 19, 1978; November 26, 1978; January 21, 1979; February 4, 1979; June 24, 1979; July 22, 1979; March 23, 1980; March 30, 1980; June 8, 1980; August 17, 1980; March 15, 1981; November 8, 1981; June 6, 1982; August 29, 1982; October 17, 1982; November 21, 1982; June 12, 1983; January 22, 1984; October, 1984; February 16, 1986; July 19, 1987; September 11, 1988; January 8, 1989; May 7, 1989; March 18, 1990; November 25, 1990; July 2, 2000
In The Boston Herald, December 20, 1970
In The Village Voice, December 30, 1971; October 24, 1974; October 1982
In The Chicago Daily News, December 1, 1974
In Life, October 14, 1971; April 21, 1972; October 27, 1972
In Harper’s Book Letter, May 12, 1975
In Harper’s, July 1977; May 1985; January 1986; February 1989
In Saturday Review, April 28, 1979, December 1980
In New York magazine, May 28, 1979
In The New Republic, October 20, 1979; March 1, 1980
In Washington Post Book World, April 12, 1970; June 6, 1970; October 30, 1972; June 15, 1980; October 11, 1981; August 2, 1987
In Inside Sports, November 1980
In Science Digest, October 1981
In Chicago Tribune, November 6, 1988
In Wigwag, October—November—December 1989
In USA Today, October 23, 1992; November 13, 1992; January 21, 1994
In Boston Globe, November 19, 1995; April 19, 1997
In Los Angeles Times, September 22, 1996
In Civilization, November 1994; March 1995; July 1995; October 1997
In Onearth, October 2004
"Here He Is, On the Prowl," in "William James in His Time and Ours," Harvard Library Bulletin, Volume 20, Number 2
Other Work
General editor of the Penguin Nature Library; later called the Penguin Nature Classics series: thirty volumes in all, 1985 on: Bartram, Beston, Austin, Bates, Catlin, Audubon, Thoreau, Muir, Powell, Warner, White, Seton, Lewis and Clark, Prishvin, King, etc., introduced by Stegner, Updike, Theroux, Dickey, Barth, Turner, Abbey, McKibben, Shoumatoff, Ehrlich, Nelson, Berry, Matthiessen, et al.
Introductions written for:
The Circus of Dr. Lao, by Charles G. Finney, Vintage, 1983
The Mountains of California, by John Muir, Penguin, 1985
The Maine Woods, by Henry David Thoreau, Penguin, 1988
Vanishing Arctic, by T. M. Watkins, Aperture Books, 1988
The Pushcart Prize XVI, Best of the Small Presses, edited by Bill Henderson, 1991
Walden, by Henry David Thoreau, Vintage, 1991
Steep Trails, by John Muir, Sierra Club Books, 1994
Land of Rivers, by Peter Mancall, Cornell University Press, 1996
N by E, by Rockwell Kent, Wesleyan University Press, 1996
The Natural History of Selborne, by Gilbert White, Penguin, 1997
The Best American Essays 1999, edited by Edward Hoagland, Houghton Mifflin, 1999
Elevating Ourselves, by Henry David Thoreau, Houghton Mifflin, 1999
Our Like Will Not Be There Again, by Lawrence Hillman, Ruminator Books, 2001
The Shameless Diary of an Explorer, by Robert Dunn, Modern Library, 2001
Shooting Blind, by Visually Impaired Collective, Aperture Books, 2002
Step Right This Way, by Edward J. Kelty, Barnes & Noble Books, 2002
Travels in Alaska, by John Muir, Modern Library, 2002
Interview, Agni 62, Fall 2005
Contributor to large-format books:
Our World’s Heritage, National Geographic Society, 1987
Paths Less Traveled, Atheneum, 1988
Favorite Places, a Travel & Leisure Book, 1989
Heart of a Nation, National Geographic Society, 2000
Other:
In numerous anthologies.
Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship, 1954; Longview Foundation Award, 1961; Prix de Rome, 1964; Guggenheim Fellowship, 1965; New York State Arts Council grant, 1972; Brandeis University Citation in Literature, 1972; Guggenheim Fellowship, 1975; Harold Vursell Award of American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1981; National Endowment for the Arts grant, 1982; Lannan Foundation Award, 1993.
Nominated for National Book Award, 1974; National Book Critics Circle Award, 1980; American Book Award, 1982; New York Public Library Literary Lion, 1988 and 1996; National Magazine Award, 1989; Boston Public Library Literary Light, 1995. Elected to American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, 1982.
Has juried competitions for the J.S. Guggenheim Foundation, New York State Arts Council
Virginia Commission for the Arts, Oregon State Arts Council, Breadloaf Foundation, American Academy of Arts and Letters, etc.
