Thoreau, The Selected Journals of Henry David

by Henry David Thoreau, Carl Bode (Editor)

American essayist, poet, and practical philosopher, best-known for his autobiographical story of life in the woods, Walden (1854). Thoreau became one of the leading personalities in New England Transcendentalism.

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy, Classics, History, American, Environment, Nature

325 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1958

About the author

Henry David Thoreau (born David Henry Thoreau) was an American author, naturalist, transcendentalist, tax resister, development critic, philosopher, and abolitionist who is best known for Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.

Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions were his writings on natural history and philosophy, where he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern day environmentalism.

In 1817, Henry David Thoreau was born in Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard University in 1837, taught briefly, then turned to writing and lecturing. Becoming a Transcendentalist and good friend of Emerson, Thoreau lived the life of simplicity he advocated in his writings. His two-year experience in a hut in Walden, on land owned by Emerson, resulted in the classic, Walden: Life in the Woods (1854). During his sojourn there, Thoreau refused to pay a poll tax in protest of slavery and the Mexican war, for which he was jailed overnight. His activist convictions were expressed in the groundbreaking On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1849). In a diary he noted his disapproval of attempts to convert the Algonquins "from their own superstitions to new ones." In a journal he noted dryly that it is appropriate for a church to be the ugliest building in a village, "because it is the one in which human nature stoops to the lowest and is the most disgraced." (Cited by James A. Haught in 2000 Years of Disbelief.) When Parker Pillsbury sought to talk about religion with Thoreau as he was dying from tuberculosis, Thoreau replied: "One world at a time."

Thoreau's philosophy of nonviolent resistance influenced the political thoughts and actions of such later figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. D. 1862.

More: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/tho...

http://thoreau.eserver.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Da...

http://transcendentalism-legacy.tamu....

http://www.biography.com/people/henry...

Reviews

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoreau died a martyr to science, from a cold he caught while counting the age, the rings of trees I seem to recall. One essential essay on him is by my Shakespeare teacher, Theodore Baird, which some perceptive editor found and included in the Norton Walden several decades ago. Baird had read most everything (tens of thousands of books) in the Amherst College Library, named in 1963 by JFK, the (Robert) Frost Library. I played trombone in the College band when both JFK and my teacher Archibald MacLeish spoke. MacL later wrote on my behalf for a postdoc studying Giordano Bruno and the lunar Moon-mappers in the 17C. But Baird was an incisive and hilarious classroom presence: see my reviews of two of his books.
As one who has flipped through the dozen large volumes of Thoreau's Journals, finding too much botanical classification in Latin, etc., I loved this useful little book for the classroom. Thoreau often writes with humor here, especially when his publisher sends him the remaindered 706 copies (out of the edition of 1000) of his A Week on the Concord and Merrimack River: "I now have a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself." His story of chasing the pig is a classic, very different from my own family story. My grandfather had a pig, Delfiney (doubtless the Fr-Canadian "Delfine"), who had the run of the little house-backhouse and barn, but escaped anyway one day. Gramp enlisted his only neighbor within a mile, who reluctantly agreed to the futile task. When they got about three quarters of a mile, they sighted the pig and Gramp called, "DelFINEY!!" The pig came running to him.
Thoreau reaches down into a bullhead nest to discover their pattern of habitation. Here's part of his long encounter with a Woodchuck.After a long run, he exhausts the creature: "I sat down by his side within a foot. I talked to him quasi forest lingo, baby-talk, at any rate in a conciliatroy tone, and throughout that I had some influence on him. He gritted his teeth less. I chewed checkerberry leaves and presented them to his nose at last without a grit, though I saw that by so much gritting of the teeth he had worn them rapidly and they were covered with a fine white powder, which, if you measured it thus, would have made his anger terrible."

I used this little paperback several times in my second-semester Freshman Comp / Intro to lit, five paperback course at a community college. The great cat portraits took everyone, and Thoreau's active engagement of wild animals. Other books I sometimes used: Slocum's Sailing Alone, Twain's Tom Sawyer, Alice in Wonderland, the Random House Treasury of Best Loved Poems...filled with songs and poems students already knew, "America," and "Battle Hymn of the Republic," both written by locals (KLBates lived in Falmouth before she moved to Colorado).

[Vishal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some key life lessons in there, but a famous person's daily ramblings do not always a compelling read make.

[Readingtomycats · Rating 3 out of 5]

The selections are interesting but incoherent.

[Lars Reijnen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Selections from a 2-million-word journal. They show that Thoreau was a belligerent, mopey, and smug individual; they also show that he was brilliant.

'I will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality.'

'For many years I was the self-appointed inspector of snow-storms and rain-storms, and did my duty faithfully, though I never received one cent for it.'

'I sit in my boat on Walden, playing the flute this evening, and see the perch, which I seem to have charmed, hovering around me, and the moon traveling over the bottom, which is strewn with the wrecks of the forest, and feel that nothing but the wildest imagination can conceive of the manner of life we are living. Nature is a wizard. The Concord nights are stranger that the Arabian nights.'

[Ritika Chhabra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Things I found out about Thoreau after I read these brief selections from his many volumes of journals:

1. Thoreau definitely loved cats, kittens in particular.
2. Thoreau did not think very nicely of women, especially in comparison to men.
3. Thoreau can describe even the most minutest of his observations with a startling beauty in words.

I would say that Thoreau is a fan of nature but come on, I knew that already.

[Natalie · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I am absolutely wild about Thoreau, I had to leave this at four stars because I didn't feel that they pulled the "best" selections. For a brief breath of Thoreau, though, it was totally satisfying. Infact, it left me wanting more, so I think it's about time to pull out Walden again.

There is something about reading Thoreau that is so satisfying. True, some of his extenisve nature descriptions about plants are a little boring, but for the most part, I love it. It's gentle and soothing to my soul. Also, as far as his philosophy goes, I'm on board for about 80% of what he says.

Here's a few favorite quotes:

I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful." p. 34

On trying to round up some charity money for a "poor Irishman":
"What a satire in the fact that you are much more inclined to call on a certain slighted and so-called crazy woman in moderate circumstances rather than on the precedent of the bank." p. 16

"Nature holds her annual fair and gala-days in October in every hollow and on every hill-side." p. 36

(12/13/12)

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

the (severely abridged) selections don't do the journals justice. snag a copy of the originals instead. walden fans can discover snippets among his entries, while general thoreau lovers can trace his evolution from grand and heavy-handed metaphors (the birds are the sphere-music of the gods!) to sparsely scientific observations that ironically reveal his integration into nature (my reading, at least).

[Eremite · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like Thoreau and his child-like curiosity and wonder at Nature combined with his insightful philosophical musings and the occasional anti-materialistic rant. However, I wasn't really impressed with what the editor had to say in his forward and chapter headings so I must assume I wouldn't agree with his choice of what was important enough to include either.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thought this would be an appropriate book for my backpacking trip last week. Turns out there's really no time for reading while backpacking. Read it last night instead. Thoreau's a weird guy but he's also a meticulously calibrated observation machine. It's all really quite impressive. And there's a certain magic to his writing.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Somewhat droning on in parts... I lost interest in some descriptions, however there are several must-read passages about the importance of nature and the revelations that can be found there, about the necessities of writing, etc.

[Sonny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoreau's alternative view of the world is a must-read for contemporary readers in a post industrial world. Dover provides tasteful mix of insightful and sometimes humorous journal entries which gives readers a nostalgia for the minimalism of the past and an appreciation for the little things.

[jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

may 11, 1839

"the farmer keeps pace with his crops and the revolutions of the seasons, but the merchant with the fluctuations of trade. observe how differently they walk in the streets."