This book provides a detailed introduction to the multifaceted and evolving discipline of ecocriticism. It locates ecocriticism within the varied domains of the Romantic movement, science, ethics, feminism and urban life, while tracing the evolution of the field from the coinage of the term to its new trajectories, through its various phases or ‘waves’. The book explores important concepts such as ecofeminism and material ecocriticism and points out the ways in which this literary/cultural theory seeks to engage with ‘our troubled environmental times’.