Moths of the Limberlost [Hardcover]

Gene Stratton-Porter (Author)

Book Description

Subjects: Moths -- Indiana Notes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be numerous typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

American novelist and photographer. Many of Porter's works became best-sellers and are famous for their vibrant depiction of natural life. She began her career as a photographer but later turned to fiction. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Buccaneer Books (January 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0899665128
• ISBN-13: 978-0899665122
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,116,521 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

60 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This is an incomplete reprint of a wonderful book on moths., August 24, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Moths of the Limberlost (Hardcover)

Gene Stratton-Porter, 1863-1924, was a naturalist, photographer, and writer. This book is derived from her "Moths of the Limberlost, with water color and photographic illustrations from life" published in 1912 by Doubleday, Page, and company. This brings me to my one objection to the book. It has no pictures! The original book contains 106 of her photographs including 20 that were hand colored. The pictures include moths, their eggs, caterpillars, cocoons, and pupa cases, along with pictures of their food plants and the environment in which they are found. While photography of her day did not produce nature pictures of the quality we expect today, they are, never-the-less, an integral part of the work. I was very disappointed to find them missing. On a minor note, five verses quoted in the original book are not in this one. Otherwise, the text does appear to be intact except perhaps for a few references to illustrations.

Given that finding a copy of the original book for sale is difficult, this reprint is well worth obtaining even without the illustrations. Gene Stratton-Porter was a keen naturalist and an excellent writer. The first chapter is an introduction. The second is an overview of the natural history of moths. It is only slightly technical. She has studied the research issues and questions of the day and comments on them. While she guesses wrong on at least one point: whether male moths find their mates by smell, her opinions are always based on observations and her reasoning clearly stated. In some areas, her observations are at the boundaries of what is known about moths at the time. But even in this technical chapter, she presents material in terms of her experiences, both experiences with with moths and experiences studying the writings of lepidopterists.

Each of the remaining thirteen chapters deals with one (or in one case, two) moths. Rather than create a comprehensive book on moths, she has focused on those that have caught her interest. These are moths that she has photographed and, in most cases, raised from egg to caterpillar to pupa and back to adult. Each chapter is not only an essay on a particular moth, is it also a bit of her own autobiography. In them she describes her experiences with moths from her childhood through the years she spent developing the book. These include her great joys in discovering and learning about the moths and her disappointments at loosing moths or at failing to successfully raise them through a life cycle. The book describes her family's participation in her love of moths and describes the friendships she made in the pursuit of these beautiful insects. It is a window into her personality and her passion for nature.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Moths of the Limberlost, October 4, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Moths of the Limberlost (Hardcover)

I love the way this authors writes, but I am told that the original copy has wonderful colored pictures of the moths.

This book makes you feel like you are growing up with Gene Stratton Porter and helping her with her nature studies.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Two editions without photos, January 19, 2008

By 

Kenneth Walker (Concord, CA, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Moths of the Limberlost (Paperback)

This is a suppliment to my August 25, 1998 review.
Two editions that I know lack photos:

- 1976 Buccaneer Books, Inc
- 2007 BiblioBazaar