The Book of Concord: Thoreau's Life as a Writer

This book is an exploration into the development of Thoreau as a writer. In it, Howarth presents a biography of Thoreau focusing on his writing projects and manuscripts. The book is arranged chronologically, with sections covering Thoreau's earliest literary works (before 1850), his early years of intensive journal writing (1850-1858), his later years of journal writing (1858-1860), and in an epilogue, the desperate effort to prepare manuscripts for publication before his death. End material includes a list of sources, end notes, and an index. (End notes are referenced by topic; specific reference numbers do not appear in the main text.) For those interested in how Thoreau learned to write, and how he developed his unique style, this book is quite interesting. Although not written as a biography, it provides much biographical information, but all focused on questions such as: What were the influences in Thoreau's literary life? Who was Thoreau writing for? How did Thoreau edit his work? What was his methodology for writing in his journal? In addition to addressing these questions, Howarth also provides summaries and analyses of all of Thoreau's works, from his earliest essays, through the two books, "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers," and "Walden," and his journals. In Howarth's opinion, "A Week," was a grand "mosaic...gleaned from scattered sources and written at intervals, over many years," but "Walden" was Thoreau's masterpiece. Although the subject matter is somewhat academic, Howarth's approach is quite accessible to general rather than specialist audiences. One aspect that may limit the appeal of the book is that it truly focuses specifically on Thoreau as a writer, and does not take up other aspects of Thoreau's achievements or thought in ecology, philosophy, or religion.

This book is a splendid natural history of how a writer--a great one--works, lives, and thinks. "The Book of Concord" is by far the best study available of Thoreau's massive Journal, that extraordinary seedbed of material from which his more formal books were crafted. Howarth does not romanticize Thoreau, nor is he an apologist; the book is both sympathetic and scrupulous, an anatomy of a soul, and of an imimitable American prose style, as original and provocative as its difficult, enigmatic subject.