''Pilgrim at Tinker Creek'' is a 1974
nonfiction narrative book by American author
Annie Dillard. Told from a first-person point of view, the book details Dillard's explorations near her home, and various contemplations on nature and life. The title refers to Tinker Creek, which is outside
Roanoke in
Virginia
Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...
's
Blue Ridge Mountains
The Blue Ridge Mountains are a Physiographic regions of the world, physiographic province of the larger Appalachian Mountains range. The mountain range is located in the Eastern United States, and extends 550 miles southwest from southern Pennsy ...
. Dillard began writing ''Pilgrim'' in the spring of 1973, using her personal journals as inspiration. Separated into four sections that signify each of the seasons, the narrative takes place over the period of one year.
The book records the narrator's thoughts on solitude, writing, and religion, as well as scientific observations on the flora and fauna she encounters. Touching upon themes of faith, nature, and awareness, ''Pilgrim'' is also noted for its study of
theodicy
Theodicy () means vindication of God. It is to answer the question of why a good God permits the manifestation of evil, thus resolving the issue of the problem of evil. Some theodicies also address the problem of evil "to make the existence of ...
and the inherent cruelty of the natural world. The author has described it as a "book of theology", and she rejects the label of nature writer. Dillard considers the story a "single sustained nonfiction narrative", although several chapters have been anthologized separately in magazines and other publications. The book is analogous in design and genre to
Henry David Thoreau's ''
Walden
''Walden'' (; first published in 1854 as ''Walden; or, Life in the Woods'') is a book by American transcendentalist writer Henry David Thoreau. The text is a reflection upon the author's simple living in natural surroundings. The work is part ...
'' (1854), the subject of Dillard's master's thesis at
Hollins College
Hollins University is a private university in Hollins, Virginia. Founded in 1842 as Valley Union Seminary in the historical settlement of Botetourt Springs, it is one of the oldest institutions of higher education for women in the United States ...
. Critics often compare Dillard to authors from the
Transcendentalist movement;
Edward Abbey
Edward Paul Abbey (January 29, 1927 – March 14, 1989) was an American author, essayist, and environmental activist noted for his advocacy of environmental issues and criticism of public land policies. His best-known works include '' Desert S ...
in particular deemed her Thoreau's "true heir".
''Pilgrim at Tinker Creek'' was published by Harper's Magazine Press shortly after Dillard's first book, a volume of poetry titled ''
Tickets for a Prayer Wheel''. Since its initial publication, ''Pilgrim'' has been lauded by critics. It won the 1975
Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction
The Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are awarded annually for the "Letters, Drama, and Music" category. The award is given to a nonfiction book written by an American author and published duri ...
, and in 1998 it was included in
Modern Library's list of
100 Best Nonfiction Books.
Background and publication
Dillard, the daughter of an oil company executive, grew up in an upper-middle-class home in
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania, the second-most populous city in Pennsylva ...
. She read voraciously; one of her favorite books was
Ann Haven Morgan's ''The Field Book of Ponds and Streams'', which she compared to the ''
Book of Common Prayer
The ''Book of Common Prayer'' (BCP) is the name given to a number of related prayer books used in the Anglican Communion and by other Christian churches historically related to Anglicanism. The original book, published in 1549 in the reign ...
''; in painstaking detail, it instructed on the study and collection of plants and insects. She attended
Hollins College
Hollins University is a private university in Hollins, Virginia. Founded in 1842 as Valley Union Seminary in the historical settlement of Botetourt Springs, it is one of the oldest institutions of higher education for women in the United States ...
in
Roanoke County, Virginia
Roanoke County ( ) is a county located in the U.S. state of the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 96,929. Its county seat is Salem, but the county administrative offices are located in the unincorporated Ca ...
, receiving both a bachelor's (1967) and a master's degree (1968). At Hollins she came under the tutelage of poet and creative writing professor
Richard Henry Wilde Dillard, whom she married in 1965. She would later state that Richard taught her everything she knew about writing. Her master's thesis, entitled ''Walden Pond and Thoreau'', studied the eponymous pond as a structuring device for Henry David Thoreau's ''
Walden
''Walden'' (; first published in 1854 as ''Walden; or, Life in the Woods'') is a book by American transcendentalist writer Henry David Thoreau. The text is a reflection upon the author's simple living in natural surroundings. The work is part ...
''. Dillard's knowledge of Thoreau's works was an obvious inspiration, although critics have pointed to many differences between their two works. However, in a nod to his influence, Dillard mentions within the text that she named her goldfish
Ellery Channing, after one of Thoreau's closest friends.
After graduating in 1968, she continued to live in Virginia, near the Blue Ridge Mountains, where she wrote full-time. At first she concentrated solely on poetry, which she had written and published when she was an undergraduate. She began keeping a journal in 1970, in which she recorded her daily walks around Tinker Creek. Her journals would eventually consist of 20 volumes. In 1971, after suffering from a serious bout of
pneumonia
Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severi ...
, she decided to write a full-length book dedicated to her
nature writing
Nature writing is nonfiction or fiction prose or poetry about the natural environment. Nature writing encompasses a wide variety of works, ranging from those that place primary emphasis on natural history facts (such as field guides) to those in w ...
s. Dillard wrote the first half of ''Pilgrim'' at her home in spring 1973, and the remaining half the following summer in a study carrel "that overlooked a tar-and-gravel roof" at the Hollins College library. She would later explain her choice of writing location as stemming from her wanting to avoid "appealing workplaces . ... One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark." When she first began writing the book, Dillard would only dedicate one or two hours a day to the task; by the last two months, however, she was writing nearly 15–16 hours a day.
Dillard's primary reader for ''Pilgrim'' was a Hollins professor called John Rees Moore. After finishing a chapter, she would bring it to Moore to critique. Moore specifically recommended that she expand the book's first chapter "to make clear, and to state boldly, what it was
hewas up to," a suggestion that Dillard at first dismissed, but would later admit was good advice. Previous to publication, chapters of the book appeared in publications including ''
Harper's Magazine'', ''
The Atlantic
''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science.
It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...
'', and ''
The Living Wilderness''.
''Pilgrim at Tinker Creek'' was published by Harper's Magazine Press in 1974, and was dedicated to Dillard's husband. Editor in chief Larry Freundlich remarked upon first reading the book: "I never expected to see a manuscript this good in my life . ... The chance to publish a book like this is what publishers are here for."
Summary
![Roanoke River in Wasena, Roanoke, Virginia](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/Roanoke_River_in_Wasena%2C_Roanoke%2C_Virginia.jpg)
Written in a series of internal monologues and reflections, the book is told from DIllard's perspective while living next to Tinker Creek, in the
Blue Ridge Mountains
The Blue Ridge Mountains are a Physiographic regions of the world, physiographic province of the larger Appalachian Mountains range. The mountain range is located in the Eastern United States, and extends 550 miles southwest from southern Pennsy ...
near
Roanoke, Virginia
Roanoke ( ) is an independent city in the U.S. state of Virginia. At the 2020 census, the population was 100,011, making it the 8th most populous city in the Commonwealth of Virginia and the largest city in Virginia west of Richmond. It is ...
. Over the course of a year, the narrator observes and reflects upon the changing of the seasons as well as the flora and fauna near her home. ''Pilgrim'' is thematically divided into four sections, one for each season, consisting of separate, named chapters: "Heaven and Earth in Jest", "Seeing", "Winter", "The Fixed", "The Knot", "The Present", "Spring", "Intricacy", "Flood", "Fecundity", "Stalking", "Nightwatch", "The Horns of the Altar", "Northing", and "The Waters of Separation".
The first chapter, "Heaven and Earth in Jest", serves as an introduction to the book. The narrator describes the location as well as her connection to it:
I live by a creek, Tinker Creek, in a valley in Virginia's Blue Ridge. An anchorite's hermitage is called an anchor-hold; some anchor-holds were simple sheds clamped to the side of a church like a barnacle or a rock. I think of this house clamped to the side of Tinker Creek as an anchor-hold. It holds me at anchor to the rock bottom of the creek itself and keeps me steadied in the current, as a sea anchor does, facing the stream of light pouring down. It's a good place to live; there's a lot to think about.
In the
afterword
An afterword is a literary device that is often found at the end of a piece of literature. It generally covers the story of how the book came into being, or of how the idea for the book was developed.
An afterword may be written by someone other ...
of the 1999 Harper Perennial Modern Classics edition, Dillard states that the book's other, two-part structure mirrors the two routes to God according to
neoplatonic christianity: the ''via positiva'' and the ''via negativa''. The first half of the book, the ''via positiva'', beginning with the second chapter, "accumulates the world's goodness and God's." The second half, the ''via negativa'', ends with the chapter "Northing", which Dillard notes is the counterpart of the second chapter, "Seeing". The first and last chapters of the book serve as the introduction and conclusion, respectively. The narrative is composed of vignettes detailing the narrator's wanderings around the creek. In "The Present", the narrator encounters a puppy at a gas station off the highway, and pats its belly while contemplating the view of the nearby mountain range; the reflective act of "petting the puppy" is referred to in several other chapters. In "Stalking", the narrator pursues a group of
muskrats in the creek during summer. One of the most famous passages comes from the beginning of the book, when the narrator witnesses a frog being drained and devoured by a
giant water bug
Belostomatidae is a family of freshwater hemipteran insects known as giant water bugs or colloquially as toe-biters, Indian toe-biters, electric-light bugs, alligator ticks, or alligator fleas (in Florida). They are the largest insects in the ord ...
.
Style and genre
''Pilgrim at Tinker Creek'' is a work of creative nonfiction that uses poetic devices such as
metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared wi ...
, repetition, and
inversion to convey the importance of recurrent themes. Although it is often described as a series of essays, Dillard has insisted it is a continuous work, as evidenced by references to events from previous chapters. Although the chapters are separately named—several have also been published separately in magazines and anthologies—she referred to the book in a 1989 interview as a "single sustained nonfiction narrative". Dillard has also resisted the label of "nature writer", especially in regard to ''Pilgrim''. She stated, "There's usually a bit of nature in what I write, but I don't consider myself a nature writer."
The book often quotes and alludes to ''Walden'', although Dillard does not explicitly state her interest in Thoreau's work. Critic Donna Mendelson notes that Thoreau's "presence is so potent in her book that Dillard can borrow from
imboth straightforwardly and also humorously." Although the two works are often compared, ''Pilgrim'' does not comment upon the social world as ''Walden'' does; rather, it is completely rooted in observations of the natural world. Unlike Thoreau, Dillard does not make connections between the history of social and natural aspects,
[McIlroy (1994), p. 87] nor does she believe in an ordered universe. Whereas Thoreau refers to the machine-like universe, in which the creator is akin to a master watchmaker, Dillard recognizes the imperfection of creation, in which "something is everywhere and always amiss".
In her review for ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'',
Eudora Welty
Eudora Alice Welty (April 13, 1909 – July 23, 2001) was an American short story writer, novelist and photographer who wrote about the American South. Her novel '' The Optimist's Daughter'' won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Welty received numerou ...
noted ''Pilgrims narrator being "the only person in
illard'sbook, substantially the only one in her world . ... Speaking of the universe very often, she is yet self-surrounded". Dillard seemingly refers to the idea of an "invisible narrator" in the sixth chapter of ''Pilgrim at Tinker Creek''; while referring to the "infinite power" of God, the narrator notes that "invisibility is the all-time great 'cover'". Nancy C. Parrish, author of the 1998 book ''Lee Smith, Annie Dillard, and the Hollins Group: A Genesis of Writers'', notes that despite its having been written in the first person, ''Pilgrim'' is not necessarily autobiographical. The narrator, "Annie Dillard", therefore becomes a persona through which the author can experience and describe "thoughts and events that the real Annie Dillard had only heard about or studied or imagined." Critic Suzanne Clark also points to the "peculiar evasiveness" of Dillard-the-author, noting that "when we read Annie Dillard, we don't know who is writing. There is a silence in the place where there might be an image of the social self—of personality, character, or ego". While most critics assume that the narrator is female, mostly due to the autobiographical elements of the book and the assumption that the narrator is Dillard herself, Clark questions whether the narrator is male. Stating that Dillard uses "a variety of male voices, male styles" throughout the book, Clark asks, "When Dillard quit writing ''Pilgrim at Tinker Creek'' in the persona of a fifty year old man, did she then begin to write as a woman?"
Themes
Religion and nature
''Pilgrim'' is often noted for its study of
theodicy
Theodicy () means vindication of God. It is to answer the question of why a good God permits the manifestation of evil, thus resolving the issue of the problem of evil. Some theodicies also address the problem of evil "to make the existence of ...
, or its defense of God's goodness in the face of evil. The narrator attempts to reconcile the harsh natural world, with its "seemingly horrid mortality," with the belief in a benevolent God. Death is repeatedly mentioned as a natural, although cruel progression: "Evolution", the narrator states, "loves death more than it loves you or me." A passage in the second chapter of the book describes a frog being "sucked dry" by a "giant water bug" as the narrator watches; this necessary cruelty shows order in life and death, no matter how difficult it may be to watch. The narrator especially sees inherent cruelty in the insect world: "Fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly ... insects, it seems, gotta do one horrible thing after another. I never ask why of a vulture or a shark, but I ask why of almost every insect I see. More than one insect ... is an assault on all human virtue, all hope of a reasonable god." While she remains drawn to the ultimately repugnant and amoral natural world, she also questions her place in it. The narrator states, "I had thought to live by the side of the creek in order to shape my life to its free flow. But I seem to have reached a point where I must draw the line. It looks as though the creek is not buoying me up but dragging me down."
The title of the book suggests a pilgrimage, and yet the narrator does not stray far from her home near the creek: the journey is metaphysical. Margaret Loewen Reimer, in one of the first critical studies based on the book, noted that Dillard's treatment of the metaphysical is similar to that of
Herman Melville
Herman Melville ( born Melvill; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are ''Moby-Dick'' (1851); ''Typee'' (1846), a rom ...
. While "Melville's eyes saw mainly the darkness and the horror" of the natural world, possibly stemming from his New England
Puritan
The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become more Protestant. ...
roots, Dillard's "sinister" vision of the world comes "more from a horror at the seeming mindlessness of nature's design than from a deeply pervasive sense of evil."
[Reimer (1983), p. 183] Unlike Melville, however, Dillard does not moralize the natural world or seek to find parallels in human cultural acts; focusing largely on observation as well as scientific analysis, Dillard follows the example of
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended ...
and other naturalists.
The "pilgrim" narrator seeks to behold the sacred, which she dedicates herself to finding either by "stalking" or "seeing". At one point, she sees a cedar tree near her house "charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame" as the light hits it; this burning vision, reminiscent of creation's holy "fire", "comes and goes, mostly goes, but I live for it." Critic Jenny Emery Davidson believes that Dillard's act of "stalking" allows her to rewrite the hunting myth, a popular theme in
nature writing
Nature writing is nonfiction or fiction prose or poetry about the natural environment. Nature writing encompasses a wide variety of works, ranging from those that place primary emphasis on natural history facts (such as field guides) to those in w ...
which mediates the space between nature and humans. Although a long tradition of male nature writers—including
James Fenimore Cooper,
Jack London
John Griffith Chaney (January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916), better known as Jack London, was an American novelist, journalist and activist. A pioneer of commercial fiction and American magazines, he was one of the first American authors to ...
and
Richard Nelson—have used this theme as "a symbolic ritual of violence", Dillard "ventures into the terrain of the hunt, employing its rhetoric while also challenging its conventions."
Seeing and awareness
While some critics describe ''Pilgrim at Tinker Creek'' as being more devoted to speculation of the divine and natural world than to self-exploration, others approach the work in terms of Dillard's attention to self-aware analysis. For example, critic Mary Davidson McConahay points to Dillard's Thoreauvian "commitment to awareness".
In the book, the narrator is not only self-aware, but also alert to every detail around her. ''Pilgrims second chapter defines two types of seeing: as "verbalization" (active) and as "a letting go" (passive). The narrator refers to the difference between the two methods as "the difference between walking with and without a camera." Whereas the former requires the need to "analyze and pry", the latter only requires rapt attention. The act of seeing is exhaustive and exhausting, as one of the chapters relates: "I look at the water: minnows and
shiners. If I am thinking minnows, a carp will fill my brain till I scream. I look at the water's surface: skaters, bubbles, and leaves sliding down. Suddenly my own face, reflected, startles me witless. Those snails have been tracking my face! Finally, with a shuddering wrench of the will, I see clouds, cirrus clouds. I'm dizzy. I fall in. This looking business is risky." Sandra Johnson refers to the structure of the book itself leading to an epiphany of self-awareness, or a "mystical experience"; as the narrator watches a falling
maple key, she feels "lost, sunk ... gazing toward Tinker Mountain and feeling the earth reel down".
Reception and awards
![Walden Thoreau](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Walden_Thoreau.jpg)
The book was a critical and financial success, selling more than 37,000 copies within two months of publication. It went through eight separate printings in the first two years, and the paperback rights were quickly purchased. Dillard was unnerved by the crush of attention; shortly after the book was published, she wrote, "I'm starting to have dreams about Tinker Creek. Lying face down in it, all muddy and dried up and I'm drowning in it." She feared she had "shot my lifetime wad. ''Pilgrim'' is not only the wisdom of my 28 years but I think it's the wisdom of my whole life."
The initial consensus among reviewers was that it was "an unusual treatise on nature". The book was published soon after her poetry collection ''
Tickets for a Prayer Wheel'' (1974, University of Missouri Press). Reviewing both volumes for ''
America'', John Breslin noted the similarities between the two: "Even if her first book of poems had not been published simultaneously, the language she uses in ''Pilgrim'' would have given her away." The ''
Saturday Evening Post'' also praised Dillard's poetic ability in ''Pilgrim at Tinker Creek'', noting that "the poet in her is everywhere evident in this prose-poem of hers: the reader's attention is caught not only by the freshness of her insights, but by the beauty of her descriptions as well." Melvin Maddocks, a reviewer for ''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...
'', noted Dillard's intention of subtle influence: "Reader, beware of this deceptive girl, mouthing her piety about 'the secret of seeing' being 'the pearl of great price,' modestly insisting, 'I am no scientist. I explore the neighborhood.' Here is no gentle romantic twirling a buttercup, no graceful inscriber of 365 inspirational prose poems. As she guides the attention to a muskrat, to a monarch butterfly, a heron or a coot, Miss Dillard is stalking the reader as surely as any predator stalks its game."
Despite being a bestseller, ''Pilgrim'' received little academic attention until more than five years after its publication. Early reviewers
Charles Nicol and J. C. Peirce linked Dillard with the
transcendentalist movement, comparing her to Thoreau and
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803April 27, 1882), who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champ ...
.
Author and environmentalist
Edward Abbey
Edward Paul Abbey (January 29, 1927 – March 14, 1989) was an American author, essayist, and environmental activist noted for his advocacy of environmental issues and criticism of public land policies. His best-known works include '' Desert S ...
, known as the "Thoreau of the American West", stated that Dillard was the "true heir of the Master". He wrote, "she alone has been able to compose, successfully, in Thoreau's extravagant and transcendental manner." In his 1992 book critic Scott Slovic wrote that ''Pilgrim at Tinker Creek'' eventually "catapulted
illardto prominence among contemporary American nonfiction writers—particularly among nature writers—and stimulated a wealth of reviews and a steadily accumulating body of criticism." Gary McIlroy believed that Dillard's work is distinctive for its "vibrant rediscovery of the woods.
hestudies the wildest remnants of the Virginia woodlands, stirring all the dark and promising mysteries of the American frontier." In a 2021 interview with
Ezra Klein
Ezra Klein (born May 10, 1984) is an American journalist, political analyst, ''New York Times'' columnist, and the host of ''The Ezra Klein Show'' podcast. He is a co-founder of '' Vox'' and formerly served as the website's editor-at-large. He h ...
, author
Ted Chiang
Ted Chiang (born 1967) is an American science fiction writer. His work has won four Nebula awards, four Hugo awards, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and six Locus awards. His short story "Story of Your Life" was the basis of the ...
was asked for his favourite religious text and said that he "can’t really point to a conventional religious text as an atheist" but that reading ''Pilgrim'' "gave me maybe the closest that I’m likely to get to understanding a kind of religious ecstasy".
''Pilgrim at Tinker Creek'' won the
Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction
The Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are awarded annually for the "Letters, Drama, and Music" category. The award is given to a nonfiction book written by an American author and published duri ...
in 1975, when Dillard was 29 years old. The jury noted in its nomination that "Miss Dillard is an expert observer in whom science has not etiolated a sense of awe ... Her book is a blend of observation and introspection, mystery and knowledge. We unanimously recommend it for the prize." Since its initial publication, portions of the book have been anthologized in over thirty collections.
Subsequent editions included those published by
Bantam Books (1975) and Harper Colophon (1985; 1988). The Harper Perennial 25th-Anniversary edition, which included an afterword by the author, was released in 1999. The first UK edition was released in 1976. The book has been translated into many languages throughout the years, including Swedish, Japanese, French, and German.
[Bibliographical Data]
. Annie Dillard – Official Website. Retrieved March 17, 2012. In 1998, it was listed in
Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction Books, both on the board's and the reader's lists.
[100 Best Nonfiction Books]
. Modern Library. Retrieved November 23, 2011.
Notes
References
*Breslin, John B. (1974). "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek/Tickets for a Prayer Wheel". ''America'', 130(15): pp. 312–314.
*Chénetier, Marc. (1990). "Tinkering, Extravagance: Thoreau, Melville, and Annie Dillard". ''Critique: Studies In Contemporary Fiction'', 31(3): pp. 157–172.
*Chevalier, Tracy. (1997). ''Encyclopedia of the Essay''. Chicago, IL: Fitzroy Dearborn. .
*Clark, Suzanne. (1991). "Annie Dillard: The Woman in Nature and the Subject of Nonfiction". ''Sentimental Modernism: Women Writers and the Revolution of the Word''. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. .
*Davidson, Jenny Emery (2001). "Stalking a Prayer: Crossings of the Hunter and the Shaman in ''Pilgrim at Tinker Creek''." ''Such News of the Land: U.S. Women Nature Writers''. Eds. Thomas S. Edwards and Elizabeth A. De Wolfe. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England. .
*Dillard, Annie. (1989). ''The Writing Life''. New York, NY: Harper & Row. .
*Dillard, Annie. (1994). ''The Annie Dillard Reader''. New York, NY: HarperCollins. .
*Dillard, Annie. (1999). ''Pilgrim at Tinker Creek''. New York, NY: HarperCollins. .
*Dockins, Mike. (2003). "Stalking the Bumblebee: An Exploration of 'Cruelty' in ''Pilgrim at Tinker Creek''." ''Massachusetts Review'' 44(4): pp. 636–648.
*Fischer, Heinz-Dietrich (1988). ''The Pulitzer Prize Archive: A History and Anthology of Award-Winning Materials in Journalism, Letters, and Arts. National Reporting, 1941–1986, Volume 2''. New York, NY: Walter de Gruyter. .
*Hardack, Richard. (2008). "'A Woman Need Not Be Sincere': Annie Dillard's Fictional Autobiographies and the Gender Politics of American Transcendentalism". ''Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory'', 64(3), pp. 75–108.
*Ireland, Julia A. (2010). "Annie Dillard's Ecstatic Phenomenology." ''Isle: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment'', 17(1): pp. 23–34.
*Johnson, Sandra Humble. (1992). ''The Space Between: Literary Epiphany in the Work of Annie Dillard''. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press. .
*Kitchen, Judith. (2011). "Grounding the Lyric Essay". ''Fourth Genre: Explorations In Nonfiction'', 13(2), pp. 115–121.
*Maddocks, Melvin. (1974). "Terror and Celebration". ''Time'', 103(11): p. 104.
*Marshall, Ian. (1998). ''Story Line: Exploring the Literature of the Appalachian Trail''. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia. .
*McClintock, James. I. (1994). ''Nature's Kindred Spirits: Aldo Leopold, Joseph Wood Krutch, Edward Abbey, Annie Dillard, and Gary Snyder''. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. .
*McIlroy, Gary. (1987). "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and the Burden of Science." ''American Literature'', 59(1): pp. 71–84.
*McIlroy, Gary. (1994). "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and the Social Legacy of ''Walden''." ''Earthly Words: Essays on Contemporary American Nature and Environmental Writers''. Ed. John R. Cooley. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. .
*Mendelson, Donna. (1995). "Tinker Creek and the Waters of Walden: Thoreauvian Currents in Annie Dillard's Pilgrim." ''The Concord Saunterer'', 3(1): pp. 50–62.
*Nicol, Charles. (1974). "Looking Spring in the Eye." ''National Review'', 26(17): p. 489.
*Papa, James A. (1997). "Paradox and Perception: Science and Narrative in Walden and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek." ''Weber Studies'', 14(3): pp. 105–114.
*Parrish, Nancy C. (1998). ''Lee Smith, Annie Dillard, and the Hollins Group: A Genesis of Writers''. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press. .
*Pearson, Joanne, Richard H Roberts and Geoffrey Samuel. (1998). ''Nature Religion Today: Paganism in the Modern World''. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. .
*Radaker, Kevin. (1997). "Caribou, Electrons, and the Angel: Stalking the Sacred in Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek." ''Christianity & Literature'', 46(2): pp. 123–143.
*Reimer, Margaret Loewen. (1983). "The Dialectical Vision of Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek." ''Critique'', 24(3): pp. 182–191.
*''Saturday Evening Post''. (November 1, 1974). "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek", 246(8), p. 74.
*Scheese, Don. (1996). ''Nature Writing: The Pastoral Impulse in America''. New York, NY: Twayne. .
*Slovic, Scott. (1992). ''Seeking Awareness in American Nature Writing: Henry Thoreau, Annie Dillard, Edward Abbey, Wendell Berry, Barry Lopez''. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press. .
*Smith, Linda L. (1991). ''Annie Dillard''. New York, NY: Twayne. .
External links
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1974 books
American non-fiction books
Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction-winning works
Books about Appalachia