Outdoor literature is a literature genre about or involving the outdoors. Outdoor literature encompasses several different sub-genres including Exploration literature, Adventure literature, Mountain literature and Nature writing. These genres can include activities such as exploration, survival, sailing, mountaineering, whitewater boating, geocaching, kayaking, etc. or writing about nature and the environment. They all involve being in the outdoors as a central theme and are usually narrative non-fiction. It differs from Travel literature, although the two genres can mix and there is no definitive boundary.
Henry David Thoreau's Walden (1854) is an early and influential work. Although not entirely an outdoor work (he lived in a cabin nearby civilization) he expressed the ideas of why people go out into the wilderness to camp, backpack and hike: to get away from the rush of modern society and simplify life. This was a new perspective for the time and thus Walden has had a lasting influence on most outdoor authors.
Robert Louis Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879), about his travels in Cévennes (France), is among the first popular books to present hiking and camping as recreational activities, and tells of commissioning one of the first sleeping bags.
The National Outdoor Book Award was formed in 1997 as a US-based non-profit program which each year honors the best in outdoor writing and publishing.
Read more about Outdoor Literature: Notable Outdoor Literature
Famous quotes containing the words outdoor and/or literature:
“From my experience with wild apples, I can understand that there may be reason for a savage’s preferring many kinds of food which the civilized man rejects. The former has the palate of an outdoor man. It takes a savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild fruit.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Our leading men are not of much account and never have been, but the average of the people is immense, beyond all history. Sometimes I think in all departments, literature and art included, that will be the way our superiority will exhibit itself. We will not have great individuals or great leaders, but a great average bulk, unprecedentedly great.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)