The Carolina Mountains By Margaret W. Morley

In 1890, Margaret Morley, a well-known biologist, writer, and educator, visited the mountains of North Carolina. She was so enchanted by their pastoral beauty and charm that she spent over a decade exploring the region, recording scenes of everyday life in captivating photographs and delightful prose. Her documentation culminated in her book The Carolina Mountains , originally published in 1913.

The Carolina Mountains is a combination of travelogue, biological observation, history, and photography. Morley toured widely through areas of upstate South Carolina and Western North Carolina, traveling by train, horse and buggy, horseback, and on foot. Her skill with a camera, her background in botany, and her ability to befriend the tough, independent mountaineers helped her create one of the most descriptive and poetic accounts of the region.

Influenced by her Victorian sensibilities, Margaret Morley presents a unique historical perspective on the region. Her descriptions of the early settlers, early education in the mountains, local speech, the Biltmore Estate, Flat Rock, and the Great Smoky Mountains thoughtfully capture the essence of the area as she experienced it in the early twentieth century.

Even today, we can trace Margaret Morley's travels throughout the region, from Caesar's Head to Asheville, Tryon to Cashiers. Her detailed descriptions of Mount Mitchell and Roan Mountain still ring true. With very few exceptions, the detailed and accurate account of her journeys makes The Carolina Mountains a reliable guidebook nearly a century later.

In 2006, coinciding with a year-long celebration of Margaret Morley's photography, "The Carolina Photography of Margaret Morley" Exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh, Bright Mountain Books reprintedThe Carolina Mountains and included over 60 enhanced pages of Margaret Morley's photographs.

Paperback; This Edition is the complete 1913 Text enhanced with Biographical notes and additional black and white photographs by Margaret W. Morley.

Margaret Warner Morley was an American educator, biologist, and author of many children's books on nature and biology. She studied at State University of New York at Oswego and Hunter College and continued her biology education at the Armour Institute (now the Illinois Institute of Technology) in Chicago and at the Woods Hole marine laboratory in Massachusetts. She worked as a teacher and was considered an expert in agriculture and beekeeping. She was most well known for her work as an illustrator, photographer, and author of books on nature.

The North Carolina Museum of History owns a collection of original photographs that Morley donated to the museum in 1914. And The Museum Shop is the exclusive seller of the book.