page_title: Gene Stratton-Porter
section_title: Nature books
hierarchical_section_title: Gene Stratton-Porter / Career / Author / Nature books
caption_attribution_description: English: First edition front cover of Moths of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter
context_page_description: Gene Stratton-Porter, born Geneva Grace Stratton, was a Wabash County, Indiana, native who became a self-trained American author, nature photographer, and naturalist. In 1917 Stratton-Porter used her position and influence as a popular, well-known author to urge legislative support for the conservation of Limberlost Swamp and other wetlands in the state of Indiana. She was also a silent film-era producer who founded her own production company, Gene Stratton Porter Productions, in 1924.
  Stratton-Porter wrote several best-selling novels in addition to columns for national magazines, such as McCall's and Good Housekeeping, among others. Her novels have been translated into more than twenty languages, including Braille, and at their peak in the 1910s attracted an estimated 50 million readers. Eight of her novels, including A Girl of the Limberlost, were adapted into moving pictures. Stratton-Porter was also the subject of a one-woman play, A Song of the Wilderness. Two of her former homes in Indiana are state historic sites, the Limberlost State Historical Site in Geneva and the Gene Stratton-Porter State Historic Site on Sylvan Lake, near Rome City, Indiana.
context_section_description: Stratton-Porter, a keen observer of nature, wrote eight nonfiction nature books that were moderate sellers compared to her novels. What I Have Done With Birds (1907) first appeared as a six-month illustrated series for the Ladies' Home Journal from April to August 1906. The Bobbs-Merrill Company published the material in book format that also includes Stratton-Porter's photographs. Birds of the Bible (1909), an illustrated reference book published by Jennings and Graham of Cincinnati, included eighty-one of Stratton-Porter's photographs. Both of these nature books were slow sellers. Music of the Wild (1910), also published by Jennings and Graham, warned of the adverse effects that the destruction of trees and swamps would have on rainfall. Her warnings appeared nearly two decades before the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and well in advance of present-day environmental concerns about climate change.
  Moths of the Limberlost (1912), the nature book of which Stratton-Porter was "most proud," was dedicated to Neltje Blanchan, a fellow nature writer and the wife of her publisher, Frank Nelson Doubleday. Prior to her move to California in 1919, Stratton-Porter completed the manuscript for Homing with the Birds (1919). Praised for its content, it described birdlife using easy-to-understand language for the general public. Wings (1923) was published a year before her death; Tales You Won't Believe (1925) was published posthumously.
  While literary critics called her novels overly sentimental, academics dismissed her nature writing because they felt that her research methods were unscientific. Stratton-Porter, who was not a trained scientist, centered her field research on her own interests in observing the domestic behavior of wild birds, such as their nest-building, diets, and social behavior. Her writing tried to explain nature in ways that her readers could understand and avoided scientific jargon and tedious, dry statistics.
caption: Front cover of Moths of the Limberlost' (1912)
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