Miller, Harriet M(ann)

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MILLER, Harriet M(ann)

Born 25 June 1831, Auburn, New York; died 25 December 1918, Los Angeles, California

Also wrote under: Olive Thorne Miller, Olive Thorne

Daughter of Seth and Mary Holbrook Mann; married Watts Todd Miller, 1854; children: four

Married at twenty-three, after a finishing-school education, Harriet M. Miller waited until after her four children were born to publish her first work, a children's essay on china-making, and she was forty-nine when she began the close observation of birds that led to her best work. Miller continued writing children's stories and essays to the end of her life.

One of the most popular and influential nature writers of the last century, Miller combined an early conservationist sensibility with the careful naturalist's eye for detailed observation and talent for writing. An urbanite herself, Miller contributed to the growing tendency in American popular literature to see nature as a healing retreat. Like other nature writers of the period, Miller indulged in extreme feats of anthropomorphism, her birds being regularly described as brides and grooms, proud parents, dutiful husbands, rebellious children, etc. Her blatant racism (a chimpanzee in Four-Handed Folk, 1897, "does the work of four negro waiters") is painful to encounter.

Miller's children's stories are not particularly noteworthy, although many (such as Nimpo's Troubles, 1880, or the Kristy books) show Miller's special concern for children in difficulty. The nature sketches for children, however, showcase Miller's teaching talent. In The First Book of Birds (1899) Miller uses the juvenile form to further her own purpose—conservation of birds and their environment. She interests youngsters in unusual bird habits, tries to stimulate further study by means of careful lessons in techniques of observation, and thereby hopes to make the killing of birds seem "almost like murder." This book, like Little Folks in Feathers and Fur, and Others in Neither (1875), describes the habits of various species in humanly significant details bound to hold a child's interest. Some of Miller's children's books are beautifully illustrated.

Miller's bird studies for adults, beginning with Bird-Ways (1885), were mostly researched and written in her later years. Not content with observation of birds in captivity, Miller traveled to Colorado, the Carolina coast, the summit of the White Mountains, and outposts in northern Maine—all this in the late decades of the nineteenth century when Miller was in her sixties and seventies. Miller's accounts of these travels and the difficulties she encountered—from barbed wire (how to get over in Victorian skirts!) to human nest robbers to litterbugs—provide absorbing reading.

The usual format for Miller's books is anecdotal; chapters describe separate adventures with various species, usually introduced by appropriate poetry and interspersed with allusions and quotations from other writers. Miller's style is urbane, informal, observant, and witty.

Miller contributed to the early conservation movement chiefly by observing how birds, in their natural ecosystems, help humans. Miller also tried to ascertain the truth in various bird myths—that doves are mournful, that cuckoos rob nests—through careful observation. Hers was a strong voice for wilderness preservation; she frequently notes in detail how human waste and destruction is left from the Maine coast to Pike's Peak.

Miller believed that naturalists tend to study specimens with an eye only to classification, while "the soul of the robin has escaped them." Instead, naturalists must observe "the free, unstudied ways of birds who do not notice or are not disturbed by spectators." Such a study, Miller maintains, should be taken up especially by women, with their "great patience and quiet manners."

The concern that women should expand their horizons beyond their traditional occupations was carried over into Miller's public lecturing and publication of The Woman's Club (1891), a guide and handbook. Such clubs, Miller believed, could "broaden and elevate" women. For these forays into territory unfamiliar to women, for her sound nature observations, and most especially for her adventuring—with mosquito netting, notebook and "good ink"—Miller deserves reading today.

Other Works:

Queer Pets at Marcy's (1880). Little People of Asia (1882). In Nesting Time (1888). Old Grip, the Crow (1891). Little Brothers of the Air (1892). A Bird-Lover in the West (1894). Our Home Pets: How to Keep Them Well and Happy (1894). Upon the Tree Tops (1899). The Children's Book of Birds (1901). The Second Book of Birds (1901). True Bird Stories from My Notebooks (1903). Kristy's Queer Christmas (1904). With the Birds in Maine (1904). Kristy's Surprise Party (1905). Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic (1906). Harry's Runaway, and What Came of It (1907). What Happened to Barbara (1907). The Bird Our Brother (1908). A Vision of Moses (1924).