The Cambridge Companion to Henry David Thoreau

The Cambridge Companion to Henry David Thoreau is intended as 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 like A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, on the monumental Walden, or on his assorted journals and later books. It also serves in some ways as a biographical guide, offering new insights into his turbulent publishing career, and his brief but extraordinarily original life. In short, the Companion helps the reader come to Thoreau’s 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.

• Introduction to Thoreau’s writing for general audience, yet covers everything he wrote • Distinguished cast of contributors • Accessible to the non-specialist

1. Thoreau’s reputation Walter Harding; 2. Thoreau and Concord Robert D. Richardson, Jr; 3. Thoreau and Emerson Robert Sattelmeyer; 4. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers Linck C. Johnson; 5. Thoreau as poet Elizabeth Hall Wetherell; 6. Thoreau and his audience Steven Fink; 7.Walden Richard J. Schneider; 8. Thoreau in his journal Leonard N. Neufeldt; 9. The Maine Woods Joseph J. Moldenhauer; 10. ‘A Wild Rank Place’: Thoreau’s Cape Cod Philip F. Gura; 11. Thoreau’s later natural history writings Ronald Wesley Hoag; 12. Thoreau and the natural environment Lawrence Buell; 13. Thoreau and reform Len Gougeon; Index.