Birth:
Edward Abbey was born January 29, 1927 in the unlikely named town of Indiana, Pennsylvania.
Edward Abbey's Life and Writing:
Edward Abbey grew up in (the equally unlikely named) Home, Pennsylvania during the Depression. His mother was a teacher, and his father held a variety of jobs, from farmer to lumberjack. As a child, Abbey wrote his own comic books but did not pass his high school journalism class.
After serving in the army, Abbey went to college at Indiana University in Pennsylvania and the University of New Mexico, where he studied Philosophy and was the editor of the student literary magazine. His first two books were the novels Jonathan Troy (1954) and The Brave Cowboy (1956), tales in the tradition of the Western loner hero.
After serving in the army, Abbey went to college at Indiana University in Pennsylvania and the University of New Mexico, where he studied Philosophy and was the editor of the student literary magazine. His first two books were the novels Jonathan Troy (1954) and The Brave Cowboy (1956), tales in the tradition of the Western loner hero.
In the 1950's and 1960's, Edward Abbey worked as a park ranger and fire lookout at Arches National Monument near Moab, Utah, at the time a virtually unknown place that he helped to immortalized in Desert Solitaire, a memoir of the time he spent at Arches widely regarded as a defining work of nature writing, alongside the likes of Thoreau's Walden.
In 1975, Abbey penned The Monkey Wrench Gang, a novel about a gang of rebellious eco-warriors who worked to sabotage those who were developing the desert. The Monkey Wrench Gang quickly became a defining work of literature for the environmental movement and inspired groups such as Earth First!
During the 1970's and 1980's, Abbey continued to write nonfictional odes to his beloved Western landscape - titles included Slickrock (1971) and Cactus Country (1973) - but none of them attained the popularity of Desert Solitaire.
Abbey's swan song was the novel Hayduke Lives, a sequel to The Monkey Wrench Gang that was published posthumously in 1990.
Edward Abbey died on March 14, 1989 at the age of 62. According to his wishes, his body was zipped up in his old blue sleeping bag and buried, without ceremony in the desert.
Edward Abbey Quotation:
"My cousin Elroy spent seven years as an IBM taper staring at THINK signs on the walls before he finally got a good idea: He quit."
