Joel Myerson - The Cambridge Companion to Henry David Thoreau

The Cambridge Companion to Henry David Thoreau is an accessible guide to reading and understanding the works of Thoreau. Presenting essays by a distinguished array of contributors, the Companion is a valuable resource for historical and contextual material, whether on early writings such as A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, on the monumental Walden, or on his Journal and later writings. It also serves as a biographical guide, offering insights into his publishing career and his brief but extraordinarily original life.

In short, the Companion helps the reader to approach Thoreaus writings, as he would say, deliberately and reservedly, by suggesting how Thoreau uses language, how his biography informs his writing, how personal and historical influences shaped his career, and how his writings function as literary works.

THE CAMBRIDGE
COMPANION TO

HENRY DAVID THOREAU

EDITED BY

JOEL MYERSON

University of South Carolina

PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK http: //www.cup.cam.ac.uk

40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA http: //www.cup.org

10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia

Cambridge University Press 1995

This book is in copy. Subject to statutory exception

and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,

no reproduction of any part may take place without

the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 1995

Reprinted 1996, 1998, 1999

Typeset in Sabon

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data is available

ISBN 0-521-44037-8 hardback

ISBN 0-521-44594-9 paperback

Transferred to digital printing 2004

WALTER HARDING

ROBERT D. RICHARDSON, JR.

ROBERT SATTELMEYER

LINCK C. JOHNSON

ELIZABETH HALL WITHERELL

STEVEN FINK

RICHARD J. SCHNEIDER

LEONARD N. NEUFELDT

JOSEPH J. MOLDENHAUER

PHILIP F. GURA

RONALD WESLEY HOAG

LAWRENCE BUELL

LEN GOUGEON

LAWRENCE BUELL is Professor of English at Harvard University. His publications include Literary Transcendentalism: Style and Vision in the American Renaissance and New England Literary Culture: From Revolution Through Renaissance.

STEVEN FINK is Associate Professor of English at The Ohio State University. He is the author of several articles on Thoreau and Prophet in the Marketplace: Thoreaus Development as a Professional Writer.

LEN GOUGEON is Professor of American Literature at the University of Scranton. He is the author of Virtues Hero: Emerson, Antislavery, and Reform and co-editor, with Joel Myerson, of Emersons Anti-Slavery Writings. He is currently at work on a study of relationships between New England and British authors as they were affected by the Civil War.

PHILIP F. GURA is Professor of English and Adjunct Professor of American Studies and of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His publications include The Wisdom of Words: Language, Theology, and Literature in the New England Renaissance, A Glimpse of Sions Glory: Puritan Radicalism in New England, 16201660, and, with Joel Myerson, Critical Essays on American Transcendentalism. He is a member of the editorial board of the forthcoming A History of the Book in America.

WALTER HARDING is Distinguished University Professor of American Literature Emeritus at the State University of New York, College at Geneseo. For fifty years he was Secretary of the Thoreau Society and editor of its publications. He is the author, among numerous other books, of The Days of Henry Thoreau, A Thoreau Handbook, and The Variorum Walden.

RONALD WESLEY HOAG is Associate Professor of English at East Carolina University. He has published on Thoreau and other American writers in such places as ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Studies in the Novel, Modern Fiction Studies, Studies in American Fiction, Southern Literary Journal, Southern Review, Georgia Review, and Paris Review. Editor of the Thoreau Societys Concord Saunterer, he is currently writing a book on Thoreau.

LINCK C. JOHNSON is Professor of English at Colgate University. He is the author of Thoreaus Complex Weave: The Writing ofA Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, with the Text of the First Draft, the Historical Introduction to A Week in the Princeton edition of The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau, and numerous essays and reviews. He is currently writing a book on Emerson and Thoreau in relation to antebellum reform.

JOSEPH J. MOLDENHAUER holds the Mody C. Boatright Regents Professorship in American and English Literature at the University of Texas in Austin. He has published widely on Thoreau, Poe, and other American writers, and has edited The Maine Woods, Early Essays and Miscellanies, and Cape Cod in the Princeton edition of The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau. His edition of Thoreaus Canadian narrative will appear in Excursions.

JOEL MYERSON, Carolina Research Professor of American Literature at the University of South Carolina, is President of the Thoreau Society. The editor of the annual Studies in the American Renaissance, his most recent books include Emerson and Thoreau: The Contemporary Reviews (editor), Walt Whitman: A Descriptive Bibliography, and Emersons Anti-Slavery Writings (co-editor, with Len Gougeon).

LEONARD N. NEUFELDT is Professor of English and Chair of American Studies at Purdue University. His recent publications include The Economist: Henry Thoreau and Enterprise, the fourth volume of the Journal in The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau, and three volumes of poems: Raspberrying, Yarrow, and Car Failure North of Nimes.

ROBERT DRICHARDSON, JR., is the author of Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind, as well as Myth and Literature in the American Renaissance and a forthcoming biography of Emerson. He teaches at Wesleyan Universitys College of Letters.

ROBERT SATTELMEYER is Professor of English at Georgia State University. He is the author of Thoreaus Reading and General Editor of the Journal in The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau.

RICHARD J. SCHNEIDER is Professor of English at Wartburg College. He is the author of Henry David Thoreau in the Twayne United States Authors Series. He is also the editor of the forthcoming Approaches to Teaching Thoreaus Walden and Other Works.

ELIZABETH HALL WITHERELL is Editor-in-Chief of The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau and Curator of Manuscripts in the Department of Special Collections at the Davidson Library of the University of California at Santa Barbara.

It may seem odd to publish a book of essays whose purpose is to provide strategies for reading the works of Henry David Thoreau. After all, judging from the many editions of Thoreaus works in many languages, Henry has done quite well for himself all these years without needing anyones help. The question, then, is not whether it is necessary to have help in reading Thoreau millions have done so on their own but whether, with help, we can read him better. That is the goal of this book: to help readers read Thoreau better.