Journal 4: 1851-1852 (The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau)

The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau (19 items)
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Despite activities as time-consuming and varied as surveying for the town of Concord and helping a fugitive slave escape to Canada, Thoreau wrote nearly eight hundred manuscript pages in his Journal in the eight months covered by the volume. Confirmed in his vocation as a natural historian, he began to compile the richly detailed records of Concord's woods, fields, and streams that would occupy him the rest of his life, and he consciously shaped the Journal to reflect his new aims as a writer. He also began the major revision of his Walden manuscript that would lead to its publication in 1854.