ABSTRACT
Whilst threads of ecological thought have existed for millennia amongst varied human societies, such ideas have often remained peripheral to the accepted wisdom. In late eighteenth century, at the same time that Romantics like Blake and Goethe wrote their poetry, industrialism was proceeding without any concern for the natural world, and far from peaceful colonial empires built up by France, Britain and other European countries were exploiting people and the environment on a global scale. Carlyle, Marx, Morris and Ruskin, who in their different ways criticized capitalist expansion, were neither the loudest nor the most influential voices to be heard.
