This first volume of the Journal covers the early years of Thoreau's
rapid intellectual and artistic growth. The Journal reflects his
reading, travels, and contacts with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret
Fuller, and other Transcendentalists. With characteristic reticence,
Thoreau mentions only a few episodes in his emotional history: an
ill-fated romance, the death of his elder brother, and an unhappy
sojourn on Staten Island, where he tried to write for New York
periodicals. Parts of Thoreau's Journal have been published, but always
with large omissions of text and with considerable grooming of its
erratic manuscript style. This edition presents the entire surviving
manuscript in a text preserving Thoreau's words as he originally wrote
them.