Elizabeth Hall Witherell – författare

This first volume of the Journal covers the early years of Thoreau's rapid intellectual and artistic growth. The Journal reflects his reading, travels, and contacts with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and other Transcendentalists. With characteristic reticence, Thoreau mentions only a few episodes in his emotional history: an ill-fated romance, the death of his elder brother, and an unhappy sojourn on Staten Island, where he tried to write for New York periodicals. Parts of Thoreau's Journal have been published, but always with large omissions of text and with considerable grooming of its erratic manuscript style. This edition presents the entire surviving manuscript in a text preserving Thoreau's words as he originally wrote them.

In the late summer of 1839 Thoreau and his elder brother John made a two-week boat-and-hiking trip from Concord, Massachusetts, to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. After John's sudden death in 1842, Henry began to prepare a memorial account of their excursion. At Walden Pond he wrote two drafts of this story, which he continued to revise and expand until 1849, when he arranged for its publication at his own expense. The contemporary audience for A Week was troubled by its heterodoxy and apparent formlessness; but modern readers have come to see it as an appropriate predecessor to Walden, with Thoreau's story of a river journey actually depicting the early years of his spiritual and artistic growth.

Henry D. Thoreau's classic A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers is published now as a new paperback edition and includes an introduction by noted writer John McPhee. This work--unusual for its symbolism and structure, its criticism of Christian institutions, and its many-layered storytelling--was Thoreau's first published book. In the late summer of 1839, Thoreau and his older brother John made a two-week boat-and-hiking trip from Concord, Massachusetts, to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. After John's sudden death in 1842, Thoreau began to prepare a memorial account of their excursion. He wrote two drafts of this story at Walden Pond, which he continued to revise and expand until 1849, when he arranged for its publication at his own expense. The book's heterodoxy and apparent formlessness troubled its contemporary audience. Modern readers, however, have come to see it as an appropriate predecessor to Walden, with Thoreau's story of a river journey depicting the early years of his spiritual and artistic growth.

The final volume of the definitive edition of Thoreau’s correspondenceThis is the third and final volume of the first full-scale scholarly edition of Thoreau’s correspondence in more than half a century. Together, the volumes present every known letter written or received by Thoreau, almost 650 in all, including more than 100 that have never been published before.Correspondence 3: 1857–1862 contains 239 letters, 121 written by Thoreau and 118 written to him. Sixty-seven letters are collected here for the first time; of these, forty-four have not been published before, including five dated between 1837 and 1855 that are included in an addenda. During this period, Thoreau was well established as a writer and lecturer, and he continued to pursue the interests and activities that had occupied him earlier in the 1850s. Letters document the publication of “Chesuncook” (1858) and “An Address on the Succession of Forest Trees” (1860), as well as his preparations, a few months before his death, for the posthumous publication of The Maine Woods and the essays “Walking,” “Autumnal Tints,” “Wild Apples,” and “Life without Principle.” Two weeks after John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, he delivered the country’s first public defense of Brown’s character and actions; his address, “A Plea for Captain John Brown,” was published in 1860. Correspondents during this period include a robust network of friends, several of whom joined him on hiking and canoeing trips in 1857, 1858, and 1860. His ongoing phenological studies are reflected in letters to other scientific naturalists, and this volume contains letters indicating his appointment as an examiner for Harvard’s Department of Natural History in 1859 and 1860.Following every letter, annotations identify correspondents, individuals mentioned, and books quoted, and describe events to which the letter refers. A historical introduction sets the letters in the context of Thoreau’s life and times, a textual introduction lays out the editorial principles and procedures followed, and a general introduction discusses the history of the publication of Thoreau’s correspondence. Proper names, publications, events, and ideas found in both the letters and the annotations are included in a comprehensive index.