Reading the reception of Ellen Churchill Semple’s Influences of geographic environment (1911) Innes M. Keighren Doctor of Philosophy The University of Edinburgh 2007 Abstract This is a thesis in the historical geography of textual reception and meaning. Its focus is Influences of geographic environment (1911), by American geographer Ellen Churchill Semple (1861–1932). Semple’s book, a treatise on environmentalism, coincided with the emergence of geography in North America and Britain as an independent academic discipline, and it exerted an important but varied influence on generations of geographers. For those who considered it a monument to Semple’s scholarship and erudition, it was a timely manifesto for a scientific approach to geographical research. For others, Influences was conceptually flawed—a text which might damage geography’s emergent academic legitimacy and disciplinary credibility. Accepted by some, repudiated by others, Influences was lauded and criticized in almost equal measure. By attention to archival records, personal correspondence, published reviews, provenance, and marginalia—the material traces of its reading—the thesis examines the different reactions to Influences , and shows that it is possible to trace a geography of the book’s reception: to identify why it was encountered differently by different people, at different times and in different places. Informed by work in literary theory, book history, and the history of science, this thesis outlines the contribution that geography, or a geographical sensibility, can make to understanding the way knowledge and ideas in the guise of the printed text are conceived, transmitted, and received. By exploring the particular characteristics of Influences ’ diffusion, the thesis offers a broader perspective on the different means by which scientific knowledge circulates; how its credibility is assessed; and how judgements as to its acceptance or rejection are made. In reading thus the different receptions of Semple’s text, the thesis proposes ways in which geographers ii ABSTRACT iii might usefully engage with the cultural study of print in historical and geographical context. Acknowledgements Sincere thanks go to my supervisor, Charles W. J. Withers. He has been unfailingly generous with time and ideas. Without his guidance, motivation, and enthusiasm, this thesis would not exist. I acknowledge with grateful thanks the Arts and Humanities Research Council, whose funding permitted the research upon which this thesis is based. Periods of archive research in the United States were made possible, also, by a Small Research Grant from the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, a Small Project Grant from the University of Edinburgh Development Trust, a Helen and John S. Best Research Fellowship from the American Geographical Society Library and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Center for International Education, and a Visiting Scholar position at the Department of Geography, University of Kentucky. This thesis would not have been possible without the kind assistance and skilful guidance of librarians and archivists at a number of institutions: the American Geographical Society; the American Philosophical Society; Cambridge University; Clark University; Harvard University; the National Library of Wales; the Newberry Library; Oxford University; Princeton University; the Royal Geographical Society; Scripps College; the University of California at Berkeley; the University of Chicago; the University of Kentucky; the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; and the Wellcome Library. I am grateful to those scholars and librarians who contributed to the census of surviving copies of Influences of geographic environment (Appendix A). For assistance in translating German and Italian texts respectively, I am indebted to Michael Burn and Rosa Salzberg. To Liana, for everything, I am grateful. iv Declaration I hereby declare that the thesis has been composed by me, that the work is my own, and that it has not been submitted for any other degree or professional qualification. Parts of this thesis have been published as “Bringing geography to the book: charting the reception of Influences of geographic environment ” in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 31, no. 4 (2006): 525–540. This paper is reproduced, with the permission of Blackwell Publishing, as Appendix D. Innes M. Keighren September 2007 v Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements iv Declaration v Figures ix Chapter 1 Bringing geography to the book 1 Introduction: reading the reception of Influences 1 Towards a geography of reading and reception of knowledge 6 Chapter 2 Historical geographies of print 8 Introduction: geography and the book 8 From script to print 11 Theories of authorship and reading 19 Textual reception and the history of science 36 Conclusion: reading the reception of Influences 50 Chapter 3 Origins and propagation of anthropogeography 54 Introduction: biographical and historiographical concerns 54 A biographical sketch 57 Ratzel and the development of anthropogeography 64 Bringing anthropogeography to the United States 75 From “unassuming little woman” to professional geographer 87 The genesis of Influences 96 Conclusion: the development and promotion of anthropogeography 102 Chapter 4 “A German dose sweetened”: popular reviews of Influences 105 Introduction: questions of scale and the reception of knowledge 105 vi CONTENTS vii Communicating anthropogeography to the Anglophone world 109 Reading the popular reception of Influences 113 Trans-Atlantic flows: the international circulation of Influences 130 Semple’s literary style 137 Chapter 5 “A new vantage ground for the study of man”: academic reviews of Influences 151 Introduction: recalling scholarly reviewing communities 151 Beyond the Anglo-American world 178 Conclusion: scale, interpretative communities, and the problem of analysis 183 Chapter 6 From the field to the lecture theatre: proving and disseminating anthropogeography 190 Introduction: seeking proof in the field 190 Semple’s public lectures and scholarly seminars in the United States 218 Conclusion: performance and representation 230 Chapter 7 Influences ’ textbook career: professional receptions of anthropogeography 232 Introduction: situating the readings of Influences 232 Environmentalism and the formation of the Chicago School of geography 234 Geography “at breakneck speed”: from the classroom to the war room 259 Semple’s apotheosis and the decline of environmentalism 269 Influences in the United Kingdom 295 Conclusion: the rise and fall of “the greatest woman geographer” 311 CONTENTS viii Chapter 8 Concluding thoughts: geography, the book, and the reception of knowledge 317 Introduction: reading the reception of anthropogeography 317 Thinking geographically about anthropogeography 319 Geography and the book 330 Appendix A Census of Influences 335 Appendix B Summer courses in environmentalism, 1902–1928 417 Appendix C John Kirtland Wright’s questionnaire 426 Appendix D Published material 428 Bibliography 444 Figures Figure 1. Ellen Churchill Semple, 1914. 2 Figure 2. Library of the Working Men’s College (circa 1913). 45 Figure 3. Friedrich Ratzel. 62 Figure 4. Frederick Jackson Turner (circa 1915). 78 Figure 5. Kentucky mountaineers. 85 Figure 6. Advertisement announcing the publication of Influences . 114 Figure 7. Theodore Roosevelt at The Outlook office (circa 1914). 122 Figure 8. Charles Atwood Kofoid’s personalized bookplate. 144 Figure 9. Ray Hughes Whitbeck. 157 Figure 10. George Goudie Chisholm (circa 1912). 164 Figure 11. Herbert John Fleure. 170 Figure 12. Fleure’s notes on Influences . 172 Figure 13. A peasant’s farm at 2,200 feet. 202 Figure 14. Terraced valley and rice fields at 2,000 feet. 213 Figure 15. The Music Hall, Edinburgh (circa 1880). 216 Figure 16. Elizabeth Fisher before a geography class at Wellesley College. 223 Figure 17. Mary J. Lanier with (left to right) J. Paul Goode, Wallace W. Atwood, Walter S. Tower, Rollin D. Salisbury, and Harlan H. Barrows. University of Chicago, 1910. 225 Figure 18. Miss Ellen Churchill Semple in her tent. 228 Figure 19. Relative independence of humanity in relation to physical constraints. 236 Figure 20. Harlan Harland Barrows. 238 Figure 21. George Babcock Cressey. 245 ix FIGURES x Figure 22. Kirtley Fletcher Mather (circa 1929). 248 Figure 23. Derwent S. Whittlesey and Robert S. Platt at the Harvard University graduation of Platt’s son, 1954. 260 Figure 24. Joseph Russell Smith. 267 Figure 25. Semple (seated at right) with Clark students on fieldwork, 1928. 272 Figure 26. Cloud Cuckoo Land. 299 Figure 27. Pejorative marginalia. 300 Figure 28. Alfred Cort Haddon. 301 Figure 29. Semple’s grave, Cave Hill Cemetery, Louisville, Kentucky. 313 Figure 30. Geographers at Muir Woods, California. 318 Figure 31. Associative marginalia. 375 Figure 32. Issue card (recto and verso) with due dates. 398 Figure 33. Issue card (recto and verso) with due dates. 399 Figure 34. Marginal swastikas. 400 Figure 35. Semple’s ex libris and donation label. 403 Figure 36. Issue card (recto and verso) with due dates. 410 Figure 37. Semple’s postscript. 414 Chapter 1 Bringing geography to the book Books are not unlike people, and some books, like some people, deserve biographies. A “Life and Times of Influences of Geographic Environment ,” if well written, appreciative but not uncritical, and racy but not unfair, would interest American and British readers who enjoy thinking about the nature of geography. 1 Introduction: reading the reception of