Thoreau: His Home, Friends and Books/Foreword
A FOREWORD
FORTY years have now passed since the death of Thoreau; his recognition as naturalist and litterateur had gained incipient expression during the last few years of his life and his memory has won cumulative interest with each decade. During the last five years the enthusiastic study of nature, exampled both in schools and home-circles, has extended knowledge of Thoreau's writings and interest in his unique character beyond the special class of readers who represented, for many years, his clientèle. As evidence of this widening influence are the frequent sketches and reminiscences that have appeared in journals of varied scope. Since the two American biographies by his friends, Channing and Sanborn, there have been issued two volumes of Thoreau's letters, three volumes of his journal extracts, and sundry minor material which affords new, corrective light upon his character and genius. The biography by the English critic, Mr. Salt, in the Great Writers Series, is more recent and interesting yet it lacks certain important view-points. Mr. Sanborn's latest study of the personality of Thoreau expands or revises many of the earlier statements and implications but it seems unlikely to reach wide circulation.
Through the kindness of relatives and friends of the Thoreau family, there have been loaned for this volume some letters and diaries hitherto guarded from the public. Interviews have also been granted by a few surviving friends of Henry and Sophia Thoreau, who have now first given utterance to certain anecdotes and impressions. To Professor E. Harlow Russell, the present executor of the Thoreau manuscripts, thanks are especially due for generous encouragement and permission to photograph certain pages of the journals. The aim of this volume has been, not alone to embody the facts, recondite and familiar, in Thoreau's life and environment, but also to estimate his rank and services as naturalist and author, judged by the comparative standards of this new century. In illustrative quotations from Thoreau's own pages, the purpose has been to choose less familiar passages, for a careful study of his writings has discovered many overlooked and self-revelatory sentences. With full recognition of the inadequacy of the result, this study has yet proved a stimulant to research and soul-uplift unequaled in many years of literary work.
Worcester, Massachusetts, January, 1902.