Edward Paul Abbey (1927 – 1989) was a highly influential nature writer and philosopher. His works of fiction, essays, non-fiction, and criticisms have been closely compared to Aldo Leopold and Henry David Thoreau.

Abbey was raised in Pennsylvania, but spent most of his time exploring and writing about the American West. Sometimes called "the desert anarchist," he was a harsh critic of the American parks system, public land use policies, and the military-industrial complex. He wrote his most famous work, Desert Solitaire, in 1968 - which he describes as "an elegy" to the western wilderness.