Henry David Thoreau. Works. The Riverside Edition. 1894. 10 vols. Walden Edition. 1906. 20 vols. (Of these volumes the last fourteen are the complete Journal, which includes in its original form what stands in Vols. V–VIII of the Riverside Edition, as Early Spring in Massachusetts, Summer, Autumn, Winter.) His works appeared in book form originally as follows: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 1849; Walden, 1854; Excursions, 1863; The Maine Woods, 1864; Cape Cod, 1865; Letters to Various Persons, 1865; A Yankee in Canada, 1866; Early Spring in Massachusetts, 1881; Summer, 1884; Winter, 1888; Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers, 1890; Essays and Other Writings, 1891; Autumn, 1892; Miscellanies, 1893; Familiar Letters, 1894; Poems, 1895.

Bibliography

A volume compiled by Francis H. Allen. 1908. Also Cambridge History of American Literature, Vol. II, pp. 411–415.

Biography and Criticism

The standard life is by Frank B. Sanborn. 1917.

Benton, Joel. The Poetry of Thoreau. Lippincot’s, May, 1886.

Burroughs, John. Indoor Studies. 1889.

Channing, W. E. Thoreau, the Poet-Naturalist. 1873.

Emerson, R. W. Lectures and Biographical Sketches. Centenary Edition. 1903.

Foerster, Norman. Humanism of Thoreau. Nation, Vol. CV, pp. 9–12.

Lowell, J. R. My Study Windows. 1871.

Macmechan, Archibald. Cambridge History of American Literature, Vol. II, Bk. II, chap. x.

Marble, A. R. Thoreau: his Home, Friends, and Books. 1902.

More, P. E. Shelburne Essays. Ser. 1. 1904.

Pattee, F. L. American Literature since 1870, chap. viii, sec. I. 1915.

Richardson, C. F. American Literature, Vol. I. 1887.

Salt, H. S. Life of Thoreau. 1890.

Salt, H. S. Literary Sketches. 1888.

Sanborn, F. B. Life of Thoreau. 1882. (A.M.L.Ser.)

Sanborn, F. B. Personality of Thoreau. 1901.

Stevenson, R. L. Familiar Studies of Men and Books. 1882.

Torrey, Bradford. Friends on the Shelf. 1906.

Trent, W. P. American Literature. 1903.

Van Doren, Mark. Henry David Thoreau: a Critical Study. 1916. Pertaining to Thoreau. S. A. Jones, editor. 1901. (Contains ten reprinted magazine articles on Thoreau.)

TOPICS AND PROBLEMS

Read Emerson’s “Woodnotes,” Vol. I, pp. 2 and 3, for a passage which admirably characterizes Thoreau, though it is said to have been written without specific regard to him.

Read “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers,” noting chiefly either the passages on literature and men of letters or the passages of a sociological interest. Is there a connecting unity in these passages?

Read “Economy” in “Walden” and the second and third of Crèvecœur’s “Letters from an American Farmer” for the contrast in ideas on property or for the contrast in ideas on the privileges and the obligations of citizenship.

Read in “Walden” or “The Maine Woods” or “Cape Cod” or “A Yankee in Canada” or “Excursions” for examples of exaggeration and of aggressive self-consciousness. Is there any real likeness between Thoreau and Whitman in these respects?

Read the characterizations of Thoreau in the essays by Robert Louis Stevenson and James Russell Lowell and decide in which points they should be modified.

Read any one or two essays for Thoreau’s allusions to science and to the sciences, the kind of allusions made, and the kind of significances derived from them.

Read any two or three essays for the nature element in them, the kind of things alluded to, and the kind of significances derived from them.