Referred to as an "acclaimed Southern naturalist,"[4] she was equally (as the Chicago Tribune described her) a "classicist, a noted Oxford University Press translator of the works of Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus".
(1973), but beyond translations and essays about classics, there were more than a dozen books on nature, works for which the author acquired a base of admirers.
[7] Novelist Annie Proulx expressed a similar perception, observing that "Lembke's writing tacks between three points: the stuff of her late-twentieth-century life; the tangle of creature and plant in every dimension of tide and river flow; and the haunting, connecting wires of mythos that still knot us to the ancient beginnings.
"[8] Among Lembke's noted titles were Because the Cat Purrs: How We Relate to Other Species and Why It Matters (2008); Skinny Dipping: And Other Immersions in Water, Myth, and Being Human (2004); Dangerous Birds (1996); River Time (1997); Despicable Species: On Cowbirds, Kudzu, Hornworms, and Other Scourges (1999); and The Quality of Life: Living Well, Dying Well (2004)-- a sober and unflinching account of the death of the author's mother.
[9] There is a repository of archived materials ("The Janet Lembke Papers, 1966 - 2008"), including notes and correspondence by the author, at the Jackson Library of the University of North Carolina in Greensboro, NC.