Page:Writings of Henry David Thoreau (1906) v1.djvu/19

 natural year in the very spots where Thoreau observed them. He has even succeeded in identifying a number of localities described and named by Thoreau which had previously been unknown to any person now living in Concord. He has also followed Thoreau in his wider wanderings, and his portfolio includes views of Cape Cod, the Maine woods, and the banks of the Merrimack River. It will be apparent that Mr. Gleason’s pictures are in the fullest sense illustrations of the text which they accompany.

The Riverside Edition of 1893 is the basis of the present edition of Thoreau’s Works, but to secure a more compact form several changes in arrangement have been necessary. Emerson’s Biographical Sketch, originally published in “Excursions,” and in the Riverside Edition transferred to the volume entitled “Miscellanies,” is now printed at the beginning of this first volume, “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers,” as a most fitting introduction to the complete works of his friend. “Walden” and “The Maine Woods” are printed without change. The prose papers included in the Riverside volume entitled “Miscellanies” are now added to “Cape Cod,” while the Poems appear with “Excursions” in Volume V. The sixth volume contains the “Familiar Letters” and a General Index to the Works. The four volumes of “Journal” extracts edited by Mr. Blake, — “Early Spring in Massachusetts,” “Summer,” “Autumn,” and “Winter,” — being superseded by the publication of the complete Journal, are not included in the present edition.