Page:Writings of Henry David Thoreau (1906) v1.djvu/18

vi lished and unpublished essays and addresses — were drawn almost entirely from his Journal, the thoughts and observations there recorded from day to day being revised and reshaped to fit them for their more permanent form. By far the greater part of the earlier Journals, drawn on in the writing of “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers” and “Walden,” appears to have been destroyed by Thoreau in the process; but enough remains fortunately to show something of the author’s methods of work, and the reader will find it interesting to compare the published passages indicated in the footnotes to the Journal with the original entries, to see the conditions under which the matter was first written and observe the alterations made in adapting the particular to the general and giving the substance a more perfect literary form.

Besides the portraits which are an indispensable accompaniment of such a definitive edition, and the numerous rude cuts, copied faithfully from Thoreau’s own sketches, which will be found in the Journal, the illustrations consist of photogravures of scenes and objects described by Thoreau. For these pictures the reader is indebted to Mr. Herbert W. Gleason, whose services in illustrating this edition the Publishers count themselves especially fortunate in securing. Mr. Gleason has made a careful study of all Thoreau's writings, including the manuscript Journal, and has explored with equal thoroughness the woods and fields of Concord, visiting the localities mentioned in the Journal and getting photographs, not only of the places themselves, but also of many of the fleeting phenomena of the