Customer Reviews

I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau

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I'm not sure where to start in this review: do I talk about what a great addition it is to Thoreau scholarship? or do I slam the previous review for being so totally wrong?
Let's start with Cramer's book. In many ways this is a "Best of.." Henry Thoreau collection! Thoreau's journals run into many, many volumes and are easily over 2 million words, and few of us have read the entire thing! And, unless you're an Historian like me, you probably don't want to!
But Cramer has done everyone a service by taking the best of Henry's journals and put them into one volume. It spans his entire journal writing life, from his first entry on October 22, 1837 to his last entry on November 3, 1861-he would die less than 6 months later at the age of 44.
Everything you would want from Thoreau is in this book; his social commentary, his humor, his Natural observations, his spiritual views. But more than this, Cramer has annotated the selections in order to explain what exactly Thoreau is talking about, or what was going on in Henry's life at the time that caused him to write or think the way he did. A good example: in March of 1851 Thoreau writes a lengthy passage about slavery and the Fugitive Slave Bill. Cramer amplifies this passage by explaining the historical context behind Thoreau's rant. He then goes on to mention that this passage, and others, later appeared in Thoreau's amazing essay, "Slavery in Massachusetts."
This is the way the whole book reads. You look first at Thoreau's awe-ispiring, beautiful words. Then you read the footnotes to see why Thoreau said what he said, or to find an explanation about whom or what Thoreau is talking about. It puts Thoreau into an historical context and by reading this book you see that, while Thoreau was ahead of his time in some ways, in others he was very much a product of his era.
It's very well done, indeed. As a Thoreau Historian (and the guy who often portrays Thoreau) I have used the book a number of times for research, or to find a cool little quote to give my presentation some extra "ooomph"! I highly recommend it!
As for the other review here: the reviewer clearly doesn't know a lot about Thoreau's life. Thoreau did not go up the Connecticut River: it was the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.
"Thoreau helping Bronson Alcott build his house and living in the attic...while tutoring" the Alcott girls??? Thoreau's "mental love affair with with the pre-teen Louisa and the reason he abruptly left the Alcott household"????
Where do these ideas come from? There's a reason why they aren't in Thoreau's journals; they NEVER HAPPENED!!
Henry never lived with the Alcott family. Ever. He briefly tutored Louisa but it was not in any Alcott home. And he never helped Alcott build any house other than a summer shack they worked on together for Emerson in 1847-48.
None of the Alcott houses ever burned. And after Thoreau's death his journals were actually protected by his sister Sophia. She later gave Bronson some of them. Eventually, many years later, they wound up in the NY Public Library, where they still reside today.
"Mental love affair"? the reviewer has been reading too much crap, like "American Bloomsbury" or "Mr. Emerson's Wife". Cramer's book is REAL history, not some fictionalized account of Thoreau's life. Please forget everything you've ever read about Concord if it was written by Susan Cheever or Amy Belding Brown.
As for the "rather strange bilblical references" Cramer used as annotations, there's a reason; Thoreau's writings are filled with Biblical references!!
If you're going to review a history book, please have some historical knowledge about the subject!
In a nutshell: buy Cramer's book! Along with his recent Annotated "Walden" you will have an exquisite collection that will help you understand Thoreau, his writing process and the times he lived in.

As an avid Thoreau reader, I eagerly awaited I to Myself, scholar Jeffrey Cramer's annotated selections from Thoreau's massive journals. Cramer's much-lauded edition of Walden (Yale University Press, 2004) made that seminal text both deeper and more accessible to me, and I anticipated similar erudition and illumination from this new volume.

Happily, I can report that Cramer's latest endeavor meets my fondest expectations. The copy text was culled from the fourteen volume 1906 edition, edited by Bradford Torrey and Francis Allen, with additions from a then-lost manuscript and new transcriptions. From that 2-million-word resource, Cramer judiciously presents passages and commentary "to representatively portray a Thoreau who was neither a naturalist, philosopher, environmentalist, social reformer, nor Transcendentalist, but all of these at all times." In fact, the Thoreau we find here reveals still more sides--musician, antiquarian, disappointed lover, difficult friend, to name a few--in fluid prose that must have tempted the editor to include an overwhelming amount of text. By keeping "readability" as a primary determinant in making selections, Cramer presents a coherent, 493 page argument for the journal as Thoreau's finest work.

Read I to Myself alongside Philip Gura's new American Transcendentalism or Robert Richardson's classic biography, Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind, to heighten your understanding of the historical, personal, and intellectual context of the journals. Then accept Cramer's invitation to "read or reread Thoreau's other works with a different sensitbility and a new appreciation," particularly the complete journals themselves.

I To Myself, a new annotated selection from the journals of Henry David Thoreau, accomplishes what I did not think was possible--a "comprehensive" sense of Thoreau's mind and art as revealed in the journal. The entire journal is published elsewhere in 14 volumes, yet Jeffrey Cramer, a leading Thoreau scholar and curator, somehow reveals the emotional and intellectual acuity of the work in just one.

Thankfully, the book is not organized by themes or by seasons but chronologically, giving readers what scattered excerpts don't--a sense of the the whole of Thoreau's life, of the evolution of his interests and ideas and relationships.

Finally, like the Walden text Kramer also annotated (also from Yale)--the annotations themselves are beautifully written--concise, crisp historical details and context that make the journal come alive for readers.

My only hope is that Yale will come out with both of Kramer's books soon in paperback, as it would make them a bit more affordable for my students.

Tom Montgomery-Fate's essays and reviews have appeared in The Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe, and many other journals and magazines. He is a professor of English at College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn IL.

I first read the 14 volumes of Thoreau's complete Journal more than twenty years ago, and I'm inclined to think that the Journal may be Thoreau's masterpiece. I to Myself is a deeply satisfying book on its own terms, and it should go far toward helping readers rediscover the complete Journal.

I to Myself is handsomely designed, the selections sensitively done, and the footnotes informative without being overwhelming. I was pleased to have light shed on some obscure references -- like the school for boys on Thompson Island in Boston Harbor. The book also includes passages not included in the 1906 edition, such as a long and haunting passage about hearing a boy's triphammer from miles away.

Though I to Myself includes a generous selection of the Journal, Jeffrey Cramer has sensibly omitted passages Thoreau used in other published volumes. It would be impossible to include all one's favorite passages, but the book does an admirable and even moving job of balancing the many Thoreaus: the transcendentalist, the naturalist, the crusader, and the sometimes difficult friend.

It pains me to have to give Thoreau's Journal a single star but that's more then this effort by Jeffery S. Cramer deserves. This "Edited" verson of Thorreau's Journal(s) is a sham. Up front in the long introduction the author tells you that he has removed the passages that became "Walden" ok, its a free standing book but also missing are:

Thoreau building a boat and taking the trip up the Connecticut River with his brother John, this is the story that inspired Huck Finn by Mark Twain.

Thoreau's observation of nature.

Thoreau's helping Bronson Alcott build his house and living in the attic of that house while tutoring Lousia May and her sister Elizabeth. The mental love affair he had with the pre-teen Louisa and the reason he had abrupty left the Alcott household.

I could go on and on about what's missing. The annotating is rather strange with several biblical references on Thoreaus entries.

Although not all of Thoreau's papers and journal pages have bee accounted for, on Thoreau's death his papers were split up between Alcott and his publisher. Some were surly lost in the fire that consumed Alcott home, some were given away to writers in the late 19th. Century so anything newr a complete Journal is impossable to reconstruct although it seems that every fourty years or so some one comes out with a multi volume set.