Journal, Volume 1 [Hardcover]

Henry David Thoreau (Author), Elizabeth Hall Witherell (Editor), William L. Howarth (Editor), Robert Sattelmeyer (Editor), Thomas Blanding (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Writings of Henry D. Thoreau | Publication Date: October 1, 1981

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.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Sandra Harbert Petrulionis is Assistant Professor of English at Pennsylvania State University, Altoona. Elizabeth Hall Witherell is Editor in Chief of the Thoreau Edition. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 712 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (October 1, 1981)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691063613
• ISBN-13: 978-0691063614
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.2 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #314,079 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A day by day look at Thoreau, July 18, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Journal, Volume 1 (Hardcover)

"Oct. 22nd, 1837. 'What are you doing now?' he asked, 'Do you keep a journal?'-- So I make my first entry today." Thus begins Thoreau's Journal, made up of more then two million words and covering about twenty-five years of his life. No other work of Thoreau's better exhibits his discipline as a writer and his devotion to the natural world. In the Journal can be found the fragmented foundations of masterpieces such as Walden, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, The Maine Woods, and Cape Cod. But what is perhaps more interesting to a reader of Thoreau's Journal are his thoughts and insights on topics such as friendship, love, religion, nature, bravery, heroism, war, slavery, the art of writing, and, most important to Thoreau, the art of living. Anyone with any interest in Thoreau will find his Journal to be an invaluable aid in understanding and following the life of one of America's most profound prose writers

5.0 out of 5 stars Be careful when you buy this particular item from Amazon, December 2, 2009

By 

Devon Voss - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Journal, Volume 1 (Hardcover)

Hello all, I just wanted to say that you should definitely be careful when you purchase this version from amazon.com. I thought that it maybe was that they just did not have the actual picture of it up, but it is totally different. It is not like the other ones in the journal series with Thoreau's face on it and its kind of brown, this one is just a blueish-brown kind of color material and does not look like the others.