Although he saw himself primarily as a novelist, Peter Matthiessen, who has died of leukaemia aged 86, became best known for his non-fiction writing, a phenomenon he once described as "being pushed so far into a pigeonhole I now doubt I will ever get out". Indeed, Matthiessen's non-fiction earned him an important place among conservationists worldwide. His writing encompassed nature and travel, and its spiritual insights about nature, man, and himself, turned him into a sort of new-age guru. Even the careful craftsmanship of his fiction reflected an approach to writing that echoed the Zen Buddhism he practised.
Matthiessen was born into a privileged background, in New York, where his father Erard was a successful architect, who during the second world war designed systems to protect transatlantic merchant convoys, and later became an executive of the Audubon Society, an environmental association. The family had houses on Long Island and in Connecticut, and Matthiessen was educated at St Bernard's school, Manhattan, and Hotchkiss school, in Lakeville, Connecticut. At Yale University, he studied English and spent a year at the Sorbonne in Paris, where he met Patsy Southgate, who would become his first wife. After graduating in 1950, he stayed at Yale to teach.
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