ABSTRACT
This chapter concentrates on the transatlantic parallels between Wordsworth's green letters and Emerson's green lectures, including "The Method of Nature", "Man the Reformer", and "The Young American". Wordsworth and Emerson observed railway growth and raised concerns about its encroachment on the natural world during the 1840s. It focuses on how Wordsworth and Emerson, as Romantic naturalists, participated avidly in shaping an early environmental consciousness through their letters and lectures. Wordsworth's green letters were directed at the Board of Trade and featured personal statements to protect the Lake District; Emerson's green lectures, addressed to a wider New England audience, acknowledged benefits from the railway while cautioning his listeners about unforeseen effects on society. In reading Emerson's green lectures, his discourse reveals cognizance of steam engine ingenuity, and his statements are not diatribes against new technology, unlike Wordsworth's green letters that vilify entrepreneurs and investors as money-grubbing, utilitarian opportunists.
