The Edge of the Sea.: With Illustrations by Bob Hines.

Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company,, 1955. First edition, first printing, of the third and most scientific of the conservationist's sea trilogy. All three books were best-sellers and established Carson's reputation as a prominent naturalist prior to the publication of Silent Spring (1962), the work that ignited the popular environmental movement. Written for the non-specialist, her sea books combine a deep appreciation of the natural world with beautiful, measured prose. This work follows Under the Sea-Wind (1941) and The Sea Around Us (1951). Carson's esteem for the sea is communicated in the opening paragraph: "The edge of the sea is a strange and beautiful place. All through the long history of Earth it has been an area of unrest where waves have broken heavily against the land, where the tides have pressed forward over the continents, receded, and then returned. For no two days is the shore line precisely the same... Today a little more land may belong to the sea, tomorrow a little less. Always the edge of the sea remains an elusive and indefinable boundary". The illustrator Bob Hines (1912-1994) was an American wildlife artist who illustrated numerous works for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, where Carson was the chief editor of publications. "Hines became the vehicle through which millions of citizens learned about their natural history" (Juriga). Octavo. Original green cloth, spine lettered in dark green with starfish and mollusc motifs, crab motif blocked in dark green to front board, patterned endpapers. With dust jacket. Illustrations throughout. Bookseller's ticket of Lauriat's, Boston and Chestnut Hill, to half-title. Gentle bruising to spine ends and corners, contents clean; a handful of nicks, creases, and short closed tears to jacket extremities, light toning to flaps, a couple of marks and faint scratches to panels, unclipped: a near-fine copy in very good jacket. John D. Juriga, "The History Makers: Bob Hines", American Museum of Flyfishing, accessible online.