- Description
- Volume 1 [Draft A], late September 1846 to September 1847; Volumes 2-3 [Drafts B-C], mid 1848 to late summer 1849; Volume 4 [Draft D], early 1852 to September 1852; Volume 5 [Draft E], September 1852-1853; Volume 6 [Draft F], late 1853 to early 1854; Volume 7 [Draft G], February and March 1854; Volume 8 [Additional Material], [1854]. The eight manuscript volumes, partly in pencil, include parts of early versions, with some torn pages; the volumes contain substantial corrections and deletions. The work is a memoir of simple living in natural surroundings that includes spiritual discovery, social experiment, and satire; it was written over the course of two years, two months, and two days but Thoreau compressed the time into a single calendar year.
- Production date
- 1846-1854.
- Call number
- mssHM 924
- Provenance
- Purchased from William K. Bixby library, 1918. Henry E. Huntington purchased the manuscript drafts from St. Louis, Missouri collector William Keeney Bixby in 1918. Before Bixby acquired the manuscripts, some of the leaves of the "Walden" drafts had been dispersed; an earlier owner had sold them to the publisher Houghton Mifflin. Currently, about fifty of the dispersed leaves are extant; they are owned by private individuals as well as by a number of libraries across the United States. The Huntington Library holds the bulk of the seven versions of "Walden," which comprise over 1100 pages.
- Restrictions
- RESTRICTED. Use digital images. Original volumes available by special permission only.
- Dimensions
- various sizes :
- Associated people
- Bixby, William K. (1857-1931,)
