Familiar Letters

INTRODUCTION

The fortune of Henry Thoreau as an author of books has been peculiar, and such as to indicate more permanence of his name and fame than could be predicted of many of his contemporaries. In the years of his literary activity (twenty-five in all), from 1837 to 1862,--when he died, not quite forty-five years old,--he published but two volumes, and those with much delay and...