If one were to advise them, a good place to start would be an inexpensive, semi-portable, annotated paperback edition of Walden, compiled by a competent editor. Filtering out collectors, aficionados, scholars, and non-English readers, who could be presumed to know more or less what category of edition they are looking for, this still leaves a large group of potential first-time readers with little clue as to where to begin. There is thus a tyranny of choice involved for the prospective reader of Thoreau's magnum opus. For example, upon perusal of the list, none of the quartet of Swedish editions of Walden issued since 1924 is included.) (And still this estimate in all probability seriously downplays the wealth of translations published. But even paring down the near-700 hits by 60% leaves one with some 300 distinct editions to consider. And while some of these mentioned categories would seem worthy of inclusion in the larger tally, recognizing the ever-widening audiences for the book and the range of media available to cater to their needs, one must slash radically to approach a more realistic figure. Crib notes, study guides, audio recordings, Braille imprints, collections of inspirational quotes, calendars, and so forth abound. Naturally there is much noise to be filtered out of such a result, at least if one wishes to stick with full-text printed editions. With characteristic modesty, Harding was reluctant to list any edition he had not been able to acquire and inspect himself, while openly admitting that numerous editions-rapidly multiplying international ones among them-would inevitably have eluded him.Īt the present time of writing in early 2009, a quick web search combining "Author: Thoreau" and "Title: Walden" with a leading online bookseller at first yields 689 hits, then 690 in real time as I scroll down the list of featured editions. Toward the end of his life, in the mid-1990s, Harding's count of known editions ran toward 250, but he was nevertheless forthright about the conservative nature of his new figure. Others, of somewhat greater ambition, presented abbreviations, annotations, illustrations, and translations. Some of them were of course supplied from plates identical to various 'parent' versions, in effect pouring old wine into new bottles. His tally at the time ran to 132 distinct editions. In the mid-1950s, the dedicated Thoreau scholar Walter Harding compiled a centennial checklist of Walden editions printed since the book's first publication. Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Civil Disobedience and Other Writings, 3rd edition, ed.
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