H.D. Thoreau : a writer's journal / selected and edited with an introduction by Laurence Stapleton

The selections from Thoreau's journals that comprise this book have all been chosen with a single purpose in mind: to show Thoreau as the conscious artist he was. Here are Thoreau's comments on the conditions for writing, how he created these conditions, and what were the ideals and purposes of his art. Here, too, are the actual experiments he carried out in search of a style experiments that led to the vigor and intensity of one of the greatest of American classics, "Walden."

Most of the material has never appeared before in any other selection from Thoreau's journals. Miss Stapleton has included many of the longer sequences hitherto available only in the complete 14-volume edition, such as the accounts of an all-day walk and an all-night walk, which show Thoreau experimenting with continuity of observation.

The selection of passages is also planned to suggest the nature and mood of his projected book on Concord.

While concentrating on Thoreau's craft, Miss Stapleton also adds to our knowledge of him as a man. Thoreau the man was almost inseparable from Thoreau the writer, and his thoughts on the nature of men and of government and life are fully represented.

We share his solitary moonlit walks, when his only companions were the whippoorwills and his thoughts; his growing indignation with slavery; his delight in the woods and animals of Concord; and above all, his timeless observations on living a proud, independent life that has its modern parallel only in the lives of such men as Gandhi and Schweitzer.