Chapters in this book

1. Front Matter i
2. Contents vii
3. Preface xi
4. Introduction: Tempe and Thule 3
5. Underpinnings
6. The Great as Aesthetic Category 11
7. Knowing the Planet: Early Travel and Exploration 15
8. Coming to Terms: Philosophy, Religion, and Science 25
9. Recognizing Greatness: The Eighteenth Century
10. The Great and the Sublime: British Aesthetics 41
11. Wild Writing: The Great in Georgian Literature 53
12. Breaking Loose: European Developments to Goethe 75
13. Enlarged Views: English Travel and Exploration 89
14. From Sublimity to Barrenness: The Romantic Period
15. Mind and Earth: Philosophy and Science 101
16. Poetic Feet: England’s Peripatetic Bards 111
17. Landscapes in Prose: Fiction and Travel 138
18. Science and Sensibility: The Nineteenth Century
19. “Go and See”: Lyell, Geology, and Belief 161
20. “What Is Nature?” Some Influential Views, 1830–70 186
21. Leaving Blanks: American Novelists and the Great 204
22. The Naked Truth: Desert Travel, 1830–70 223
23. Mighty Fortresses: The Meanings of Mountains, 1830–70 239
24. The Arctic Saga: Polar Exploration, 1830–67 254
25. Desert Souls: The Great and Barren in European Literature, 1830–66 263
26. On the Beach: Victorian Writers by the Sea of Doubt 279
27. On the Heath: The 1870s 303
28. The Heath Revisited 327
29. Chronological Table 333
30. Lexicon 349
31. Works Cited 375
32. Index 375