Abbey, Edward Paul (1927-1989), was an American writer , conservationist , and philosopher . He wrote controversial essays and fiction about the natural world and the effects of modern civilization on American wildlife. These writings influenced the development of the environmental movement in the 1970’s. Abbey’s writings dramatized the cause of defending and restoring the wilderness of the southwestern United States.
As a teenager, Abbey hitchhiked around the United States, falling in love with the West . After college, he worked as a fire lookout and a park ranger in the national parks of the western mountains. Abbey wrote about the beauty of the parks and how such natural areas were in danger of being overrun by commercialized tourism, housing, mining, ranching, and timber operations. One of Abbey’s best known works, Desert Solitaire (1968), is an autobiographical essay with vivid accounts of his wilderness experiences as a lookout and ranger. His novel The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975) follows a gang of outsiders who sabotage development operations to protect the wilderness. Throughout his works, Abbey claims that the wilderness is an essential element of human freedom.
Abbey was born in Indiana, Pennsylvania, on Jan. 29, 1927. He graduated from the University of New Mexico with a degree in philosophy in 1951 and received a master’s degree there in 1956. In his later years, Abbey taught writing at the University of Arizona. He died on March 14, 1989.
