Abbey, Edward

Abbey, Edward

(born Jan. 29, 1927, Home, Pa., U.S.—died March 14, 1989, Oracle, Ariz.) U.S. writer and environmentalist. Abbey worked as a park ranger and fire lookout for the National Park Service. He wrote a number of volumes on consumer culture's encroachment on the American wilderness. Desert Solitaire (1968), one of his best-known, is set in southeastern Utah. His 1975 novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, describing the exploits of a band of guerrilla environmentalists, inspired numerous real-life activists.

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Abbey, Edward (1927–89) author, conservationist; born in Home, Pa. Raised on a Pennsylvania farm, he moved permanently to the Southwest in 1947. He published his first book, the novel Jonathan Troy, in 1954. In Desert Solitaire (1968), an account of his years as a part-time ranger in the Arches National Monument, Utah, he called for, among other things, a ban on motor vehicles in wilderness preserves. The Monkey Wrench Gang (1976), a novel about a gang of ecological saboteurs, was a bestseller and made him a cult hero; although he disavowed such extremists who actually engaged in sabotage on behalf of ecological goals, he became increasingly quirky in his writings and public statements.