Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/19



INTRODUCTION

BY

F. B. SANBORN

No one who has not examined the various drafts of manuscript which finally issued in the printed page, can fully appreciate the pains taken by Thoreau to make his published writings conform to his peculiar standard of excellence. The Sir Walter RaleghRaleigh [sic], lately printed for the members of The Bibliophile Society, was made up by him from three such drafts, each omitting and inserting something which the others had not.

Two drafts of Thoreau's earlier material which, with copious additions, came forth, after ten years of amendment and revision, as A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers, now lie before me. The first, though a fragment, is the earliest diary of the voyage noted down in 1839, in the boat or tent, and afterwards written out more fully [xi]