The Compositional, Lecture, and Publication Histories of Henry David Thoreau’S “Walking” Read Ecocritically

Beyond the Book: The Compositional, Lecture, and Publication Histories of Henry David Thoreau’s “Walking” Read Ecocritically By Jennie Lynn Walker B. A. May, 1997, Salisbury State University M. A. May, 2001, Salisbury State University A Dissertation submitted to The Faculty of The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences Of The George Washington University In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy January 31, 2010 Dissertation directed by Christopher Sten Professor of English The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University certifies that Jennie Lynn Walker has passed the final examination for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy as of 4 September 2009. This is the final and approved form of the dissertation. Beyond the Book: The Compositional, Lecture, and Publication Histories of Henry David Thoreau’s “Walking” Read Ecocritically Jennie Lynn Walker Dissertation Research Committee: Christopher Sten, Professor of English, Dissertation Director Ann Romines, Professor of English, Committee Member Sandra Petrulionis, Professor of English, Pennsylvania State University, Committee Member ii © Copyright 2010 by Jennie Lynn Walker All rights reserved iii Dedication The author wishes to dedicate her work to Joseph Gilbert who has taught me to follow my bliss, and who, in Thoreau’s spirit, embraces the sauntering life from his little mountain top home each day, and in memoriam of Bradley P. Dean, a true Thoreau scholar and friend. The author also wishes to dedicate her work to her family for their continual support of her academic pursuits: for my parents who gave me every educational opportunity; for baby Ellie whose refusal to let me put her down kept me grounded in front of my computer while she slept blissfully on my lap through the writing of much of this work; for big sister Livi whose daily reminder complete with hugs that “after mommy is a doctor, we can go to the beach” was often the encouragement I needed to keep plugging away; and finally to my husband, Chad Wollenweber, for his unwavering patience and faith in me every step of the way, without whom this project never would have been written. iv Acknowledgments The author wishes to acknowledge the generosity of her dissertation committee. To her director, Professor Christopher Sten: I could not have asked for a more supportive, encouraging, and dedicated director. No detail was too small for your thought-provoking comments that served to enhance the project. To committee member Professor Sandra Petrulionis: your research and revisionary suggestions and enthusiasm for the project were always welcome rewards of my work with you. To committee member Ann Romines: your positive remarks coupled with questioning seemed to strike just the right balance on my drafts. Thank you all for creating such a positive final step in my pursuit of the Doctorate of Philosophy, and for helping to make that pursuit a success. vAbstract of Dissertation Beyond the Book: The Compositional, Lecture, and Publication Histories of Henry David Thoreau’s “Walking” Read Ecocritically This dissertation offers an analysis of Thoreau’s lecture career that ultimately establishes his success in that role; provides a detailed ecocritical reading of “Walking’s” compositional and lecture histories; and analytically synthesizes all known extant information regarding the publication history of “Walking.” Chapter one provides an overview of the project and explains the need for an examination of pertinent biographical elements that impacted the development of Thoreau’s lecturing and writing. This chapter evidences the need for an ecocritical analysis of the seemingly extra-textual events that arguably served as the crux of the evolution of his work. Chapter two’s comprehensive examination of Thoreau’s lecturing career calls into question previous scholarship that overwhelmingly considers Thoreau’s lecturing career to be quite unsuccessful. Rather, historical and biographical evidence proves that Thoreau achieved more than a modicum of platform success, not the least of which is the literary legacy of his lecture-essays. Chapter three considers the development of his “Walking” lecture-essay, giving particular attention to its environmental significance. An ecocritical, biographical analysis of the compositional and lecture histories of “Walking” evidences the development of Thoreau’s ecocentric paradigm. Extant correspondence and Journal passages reveal the symbiotic relationship between Thoreau’s writing and lecturing that are the outgrowth of his excursions in vi nature. Chapter four examines “Walking” beyond Thoreau’s lecturing by providing textual publication history from the initial 1862 Atlantic Monthly printing to editions of printed as recently as 2008. In particular, substantive textual emendations that were likely unauthorized, yet still printed in many contemporary editions, are here explored. Through its examination of Thoreau’s lecture career, ecocritical reading of the compositional and lecture histories of “Walking,” and detailed study of the publication of the essay, this dissertation provides an analysis of heretofore unexplored avenues of Thoreau research that reveal a great deal about the author and his writing. Ecocritically examining Thoreau’s world beyond the text evidences biographical elements that impacted the composing, revising, and publication of the essay, and ultimately help to explain the philosophical development of Thoreau’s ideas that led to the ecocentric paradigm he outlines in “Walking.” vii Table of Contents <ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">Dedication </li><li style="flex:1">iv </li></ul><ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">v</li><li style="flex:1">Acknowledgments </li></ul>Abstract of Dissertation Table of Contents vi vii <ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">1</li><li style="flex:1">Chapter 1: Introduction: Thoreau’s Creating Imagination </li></ul><ul style="display: flex;"><li style="flex:1">Chapter 2: An Uncommon Success: Thoreau’s Lecturing Career </li><li style="flex:1">20 </li></ul>Chapter 3: The Flowering of a Work: An Ecocritical Examination of the Compositional and Lecture Histories of Thoreau’s “Walking” 100 Chapter 4: Heretic of Concord: The Publication History of Thoreau’s “Walking” 208 Works Cited 282 viii 1Thoreau’s “Creating Imagination” Henry David Thoreau’s environmental legacy is often mentioned in literary scholarship about the writer and his works, yet even with the recent surge of reading texts with nature in mind, there is much left to explore regarding the writings of this most famous author. In particular, while a good deal of ecocritical1 analysis has been done regarding Thoreau’s “Walking,” this essay remains fertile ground for scholars. Though not as famous as Walden, and perhaps not as politically fiery as “Civil Disobedience” or “A Plea for Captain John Brown,” Thoreau’s “Walking” is a radical text that can be considered the heart of his contribution to the environmental movement; it is the crux of Thoreau’s environmental thought, his ecocentric manifesto. Thoreau himself believed this work to be a defining moment in his life, writing across the top of a lecture draft, “I regard this as a sort of introduction to all that I might write hereafter” (Dean, “A Sort of Introduction” 1).2 The essay was refined over a span of more than ten years, yet how Thoreau grew the work from journal entries, to lyceum lectures, to the published text has been little studied. The extended genesis of “Walking” took even longer than the seven- 1 Cheryll Glotfelty writes that “ecocriticism is the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment” (xviii). In the following study, I take that definition one step further by considering how the physical environment was elemental in the very shaping of Thoreau’s literary pursuits – in particular, “Walking.” 2 See Bradley P. Dean, “A Sort of Introduction.” Thoreau Research Newsletter 1 (January 1990): 1-2. This text is difficult to locate in libraries, but it is available via the World Wide Web at the Thoreau Reader <a href="/goto?url=http://www.thoreau.eserver.org\sortof.html" target="_blank">where it has been reprinted with permission from the author: www.thoreau.eserver.org\sortof.html. </a>2year span in which he wrote Walden, the development of which has been finely explored in J. Lyndon Shanley’s The Making of Walden. In some respects the following study of “Walking” parallels Shanley’s work on Walden; both consider the compositional, lecture, and publication histories of their respective texts. Shanley, however, examines the manuscript pages of Walden and provides an early version of that text. My work with the genesis of “Walking” led me in a different direction – specifically, to an examination of the two most significant biographical influences on the text: Thoreau’s lecturing career and his pursuits in nature. In particular, understanding the development of “Walking” reveals the importance of the text on the formation of Thoreau’s environmental philosophy. In other words, while the final published text has received much study, almost nothing has been written concerning the seminal process of Thoreau’s writing of the essay that was deeply rooted in his public self (Thoreau as lecturer) and his personal experiences (Thoreau as explorer of nature). Further, the author’s correspondence with friends provides significant information concerning his lecture career, his works, and his writing process. Moreover, an examination of the voluminous journal evidences passages incorporated into his essays. Less explicitly, Thoreau’s journal reveals the study, observations, and experiences that influenced his writing, many of which were recollections, notes, and philosophical ponderings regarding Nature. Most significantly, examining Thoreau’s study of and excursions in nature demonstrates the crucial influence his natural pursuits had on his writing of “Walking.” Examining Thoreau’s lecture career and experiences in nature during the more than ten year period in which he developed this essay so essential to his life’s work reveals just how closely related these biographical aspects truly are to his writing. 3This new scholarship on Thoreau with particular reference to his lecturing, nature study, and excursions is a version of the kind of study that goes beyond a critical examination of the text, the scholarship that Hershel Parker argues is very much needed since it can potentially reveal much more about the author and the text than is currently known. This more comprehensive study “makes the facts about composition and revision a part of the proper study of texts and . . . takes relevant biographical and textual evidence fully into account” (Adams and Ross 5). As Stephen Adams and Donald Ross, Jr. write, Parker urges us to see literary works in this broader and dynamic context, rather than focusing all of our interpretive energies on a fixed, authorized, and determined product. Our interpretations can thus point to writings whose meanings have changed as they were being composed, and whose meanings are liable to further change as they are read by later generations. Parker invites us to consider literary texts as manifestations of the creating imagination, rather than as final Works that somehow got bound into matched sets at the ends of the creators’ lives. A romantic view of a world of becoming rather than being is thus quite appropriate, especially for writers like Thoreau . . . , whose ideas were in flux. (5- 6) With Parker’s recommendation in mind, the following study of “Walking” offers an examination of the most pertinent biographical influences on the essay’s writing: Thoreau’s lecturing career and his relationship with nature. Following a comprehensive examination of Thoreau’s lecturing career, an ecocritical examination of the compositional and lecture histories of “Walking” answers Parker’s call for a study that takes “relevant biographical and textual evidence fully into account” (5). 4In particular, in an ecocritical analysis of the textual composition and lecture histories of “Walking,” the present study considers what Thoreau was doing and where he was during his writing, revising, and lecturing of this essay. Given that “Walking” may be considered Thoreau’s environmental manifesto, place-oriented biographical evidence is particularly significant for a more complete study of the lecture-essay than has previously been written. For example, the essay’s opening discussion about the “saunterer” can be traced to Thoreau’s 10 January 1851 Journal reflection regarding his own sauntering in the snowy hills and woods of his beloved Concord. As with the transitory nature of the walk itself, the writing of “Walking” was a continually evolving work in progress for more than ten years. Particularly, the composing and lecturing elements of the textual development of “Walking” are conjointly considered in this study since his lecture was concurrently written and revised during the years in which Thoreau publicly presented the work. Rounding out the study is a final chapter on the publication history of “Walking.” While much new critical thought is offered in chapters two and three, this final section is primarily a synthesis of all known extant information about the essay’s publication as gleaned from a variety of sources. Making this information available in one place will serve for further scholarly research. Additionally, the chapter offers more information than has heretofore been explored regarding the publication of “Walking.” Substantive textual emendations that were made after Thoreau’s submission of the copy-text but before publication of the essay are here noted and examined ecocritically. In other words, I argue that the text as Thoreau wrote it is essential for understanding his ecocentric paradigm. The overall scope of the present study, then, is to offer an analysis 5of Thoreau-as-lecturer that ultimately establishes his success in that role; to provide a detailed ecocritical reading of “Walking’s” compositional and lecture histories; and to analytically synthesize all known extant information regarding the publication history of “Walking.” Begun in 1826 after the publication of Josiah Holbrook’s seminal work, “Associations of Adults for Mutual Education,” in which he called for an organization for social and individual improvement, the American Lyceum quickly became the place for the dissemination of public knowledge. Although established with the idea of mutual education and a sense of harmony among all participants, lyceums in many towns soon became the vehicle for exploring radical thought. As entertaining as some lyceums may have been, the educational intent of the association as determined by Holbrook remained a fundamental principle of most individual lyceums throughout their existence. Undoubtedly, it was the educative mission of the organization that so attracted Thoreau. For him, the lyceum offered a place to learn as a participatory audience member and, later, to share his study as a lyceum lecturer. Ordinarily not a man to involve himself in public affairs, Thoreau’s active participation in the lyceum was a highly influential experience that demonstrably impacted the development of his life and writings. As with his sometimes discordant scientific and philosophic natural history studies, Thoreau also felt torn between two worlds as a lecturer. At times he anxiously prepared to delve into making his living as a professional lecturer, but more often Thoreau harshly criticized the very audience on which his lecturing depended. Yet this public venue offered Thoreau a new medium for refining his thoughts as he pored over journal passages and lecture drafts to find the words that would best illustrate his 6ecocentric understanding of the world. Unlike some on the lecture circuit, Thoreau did not write entertaining essays simply to please his audience, but rather he spoke about what he knew best – his experiences. At times this meant his lectures contained material that offered a critique of the very social fabric of which his audience was made, such as he does in “Life Without Principle,” and more often than not this meant that his lectures revealed what he learned from his experiences in nature, as he tells the “moose story” in his Maine Woods lectures. Regardless of his lecture topic, Thoreau was more comfortable in the woods and fields than in the public sphere of the lyceum lecturer. Ultimately, then, Thoreau’s acceptance of himself as a lecturer was always somewhat tenuous. Most extant scholarship concerning Thoreau’s lecture career claims that he attained very little success on the lecture platform, yet a detailed examination of his involvement in the lyceum movement demonstrates otherwise. For example, from 1854 until 1860, his last year on the lecture circuit, Thoreau was advertised as a lecturer as part of Horace Greeley’s selective and very popular New York Tribune list. Those who find Thoreau’s lecturing career to be less than stellar often base their claims on the dollars Thoreau earned (usually ten to twenty dollars per lecture, when he was paid at all), the number of lectures he presented (seventy-four in twenty-two years), and the handful of negative comments he received from a few of his auditors. Early biographers such as F. B. Sanborn and Henry Salt record Thoreau’s apparently less than enthusiastic presentation of “dry details,” while Walter Harding writes that Thoreau’s ideas must be read rather than heard to be understood. Bradley P. Dean and Ronald Wesley Hoag mention that he only earned a few hundred dollars during his twenty-two years of 7lecturing, and that during some years he presented no lectures at all. With respect to historical data regarding lyceum lecturers, however, Thoreau’s earnings and the number of readings he presented are not as paltry as critics claim. Indeed, while his success may not be as lucrative in dollars earned or lectures presented as a handful of other popular lecturers, Thoreau presented at least a moderate number of lectures and earned a better than average sum. In addition, comments from those who heard Thoreau lecture were, in the main, quite positive. Moreover, measured beyond dollars earned and numbers of lectures given, his career on the platform may indeed be considered quite the success. Particularly, Thoreau’s moderate number of lecture engagements afforded him the time he required to pursue his interests in Nature. In turn, what Thoreau gleaned from his natural explorations was then woven into his writings and lectures. For example, many of Thoreau’s published writings, such as his most famous Walden, his travel narratives Cape Cod and the Maine Woods, and his environmental manifesto “Walking,” are derivative of his lectures and are in turn rooted in his natural study and exploration. Both the popularity and the canonization of Thoreau’s lecture-writings are thus cause for considering him a successful lecturer. Thoreau’s success as a lecturer is owed mainly to the considerable attention he devoted to his writing and study. Examining the compositional and lecture histories of just one of Thoreau’s essays, “Walking,” for example, demonstrates the many dimensions of his “creating imagination.” The writing of the lecture-essay was certainly a labor of love for Thoreau, for its very language is often gleaned from his personal journal thoughts, the essay reflects his passion for nature, and the development of the essay spanned more than ten years. Initial excerpts from his journal as far back as his 1842-44 8Journal3 provide the springboard for thoughts included in his first lecture draft, which was most likely written between late fall 1850 and early 1851. Further examination of the Journals reveals that the genesis for the composition of “Walking” may be identified in Journal passages as late as February of 1852. These excerpted and refined Journal passages account for upwards of one-fourth of “Walking, and so whether presented as a lecture or read as an essay, the work contains a deeply personal quality. While scholars have long known that Thoreau gleaned passages from his Journal to write his lectures and essays, and despite the number of identified parallel passages between his Journal and his finished writings, no comprehensive study of the Journal passages that comprise the published text of “Walking” as yet exists. As such, one element of the chapter on the compositional and lecture histories of “Walking” (chapter three) will be the identification of these Journal passages. These selections reveal that Thoreau developed his essay over slightly more than ten years. During most of these years, he also presented it in lecture form. In fact, a compositional and historical study of the essay reveals that he most likely wrote the original essay as a lecture in anticipation of a lecture tour to the West.4 From journal passages and early lecture drafts, Thoreau continued to refine his work on this text until he had so much material he split the lecture in two sometime between his 31 May 1851 presentation and his 23 May 1852 lectures. He also subsequently began culling material from the two lectures for his essays on “Moonlight” and “What Shall it Profit?” By May of 1854, “Walking” and “The Wild” were two fully 3 The exact date of some of Thoreau’s early Journal passages that appear in “Walking” cannot be definitively determined. 4 The “West” of the nineteenth century meant the “Old North West,” or the “Mid-West” today. Thoreau’s lecturing plans also included travel to Ontario, or “Canada West,” as it was known in his day. 9developed, closely related texts that served him well on the lyceum lecture circuit; on a number of occasions he read one essay in the morning and the other in the evening to the same audience. Thoreau continued over the next six years to refine his now two companion lectures and to share them with audiences in diverse locations, from nearby Worcester, Massachusetts to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In fact, Thoreau’s lecturing and composing appear to have gone hand-in-hand. Although Thoreau’s Journal and correspondence are filled with his retorts to his audience, that very audience served him well by indirectly assisting in his revision processes. The audience provided Thoreau with a venue where he could share his ideas, and how he was received by his auditors certainly influenced his subsequent composing and revising. Given the interdependent nature of the concurrent composition and lecture processes in which he engaged, the specific lecture history of “Walking” is also here examined. All known extant factual details about Thoreau’s lecture presentations of “Walking,” such as the locations, dates, and times of each presentation, are noted. Additional information includes all known extant reviews, journal comments, and related correspondence. In addition, as evidence in chapter three attests, Thoreau’s proposed lecture tour to the West may not have been only a driving force in the composition of the essay, but also an influential element in shaping the actual subject matter of “Walking.” Consider, for example, that the “West” is itself a major element of the text and a favorably portrayed one at that-- both literally and symbolically. In addition to the biographical element of Thoreau’s proposed tour to the West, other places in nature, such as fields, forests, and brooks, are briefly mentioned in the lecture-essay. Significantly, for a work that has long been considered one of Thoreau’s late natural history writings, it

The Compositional, Lecture, and Publication Histories of Henry David Thoreau’S “Walking” Read Ecocritically

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