The NYRB Journal

Well, lookie here--my spiffy new copy of Henry David Thoreau's Journal from NYRB Classics, presenting selections from beginning to end--that is, from 1837 to 1861. It's a fit companion for (and perhaps will come to supplant) the Penguin Classics edition of A Year in Thoreau's Journal: 1851. The NYRB edition comes presented by an introduction from the editor, Damion Searls, and a preface by John R. Stilgoe (not quite clear to me why this double intro). Searls articulates a challenging strategy:

Seasons mattered deeply to Thoreau and I have tried to preserve the balance between the seasons, from his long summer walks to his heavier reading in the snowed-in winters. Months matteered to him too: his first book was organized as a week, and his second, Walden, as a year ... I made sure to include one set of months less abridged than the rest, a representative calendar with an extra March to fetch the year around:

So we have full (or extensive) selections for March 1853, April 1856, May 1852 and so forth. The other approach (of H. Daniel Peck in he Penguin) is simply to take an entire year and let it voice its own rhythms, end to end. There is a gain here, and a loss.

A virtue of which Searls does not speak is that in his extensive view, we get to see the sensibility of the author as it matures and seasons itself. It's a bit like reading Montaigne in bulk; along with sight and hearing and touch and smell and thought, we get the full dimension of time.