ABSTRACT
Despite the evident connections between English teaching and environmental relationships, this has not been explicitly explored in histories of English. The focus instead has been on the battles for supremacy between approaches to English originating from Cambridge (a literary approach) and London (an urban, language-based approach). Yet English as a subject began with a firm emphasis on the environment as part of its social mission. There is a striking affinity between the development of English and concern about environmental education as the following rereading of the history of English teaching will aim to reveal.
