Author: Henry David D. Thoreau

This is the third and final volume of the first full-scale scholarly edition of Thoreau’s correspondence in more than half a century. Together, the volumes present every known letter written or received by Thoreau, almost 650 in all, including more than 100 that have never been published before.

“Correspondence 3: 1857–1862” contains 239 letters, 121 written by Thoreau and 118 written to him. Sixty-seven letters are collected here for the first time; of these, 44 have not been published before, including five dated between 1837 and 1855 that are included in an addenda. 

During this period, Thoreau was well established as a writer and lecturer, and he continued to pursue the interests and activities that had occupied him earlier in the 1850s. 

Letters document the publication of “Chesuncook” (1858) and “An Address on the Succession of Forest Trees” (1860), as well as his preparations, a few months before his death, for the posthumous publication of “The Maine Woods “ and the essays “Walking,” “Autumnal Tints,” “Wild Apples,” and “Life without Principle.”