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:
“Close to the academy in this town they have erected a sort of gallows for the pupils to practice on. I thought that they might as well hang at once all who need to go through such exercises in so new a country, where there is nothing to hinder their living an outdoor life. Better omit Blair, and take the air.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In talking with scholars, I observe that they lost on ruder companions those years of boyhood which alone could give imaginative literature a religious and infinite quality in their esteem.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)