The Journal of Thoreau (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Henry David Thoreau
- First Published: 1906
- Type of Work: Journal
- Genres: Nonfiction, Diary
- Subjects: United States or Americans, Nature, Authors or writers, Nineteenth century, Rural or country life, New England, Romanticism, Naturalists, Transcendentalism
From October 22, 1837, when he was twenty years old, until November 3, 1861, when he was suffering his fatal illness, Thoreau kept a journal. Biographer Walter Harding considers it “his major literary accomplishment,” though its length of nearly two million words, fourteen volumes, and more than seven thousand printed pages makes it less accessible to the reader than Walden and the other shorter works that Thoreau polished for publication. A lost fifteenth volume was discovered and published in 1958. Leon Edel, who values the journal less than Harding does, calls it...
[The entire page is 635 words long]
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