This collection of fifty-three early pieces by Thoreau represents the full range of his youthful imagination. Collected, arranged, and carefully edited for the first time here, the writings date from 1828 to 1852 and cover a broad range of subjects: learning, morals, literature, history, politics, and love. Included is a major essay on Sir Walter Raleigh that was not published during the author's lifetime and a fragmentary college piece here published for the first time. Titles of essays published in the volume are given below.
Early Essay?
The Seasons
Anxieties and Delights of a Discoverer
Men Whose Pursuit Is Money
Of Keeping a Private Journal
"We Are Apt to Become What Others . . . Think Us to Be"
Forms, Ceremonies, and Restraints of Polite Society
A Man of Business, a Man of Pleasure, a Man of the World
Musings
Kinds of Energetic Character
Privileges and Pleasures of a Literary Man
Severe and Mild Punishments
Popular Feeling
Style May . . . Offend against Simplicity
The Book of the Seasons
Sir Henry Vane
Literary Digressions
Foreign Influence on American Literature
Life and Works of Sir W. Scott
The Love of Stories
Cultivation of the Imagination
The Greek Classic Poets
The Meaning of "Fate"
Whether the Government Ought to Educate
Travellers & Inhabitants
History . . . of the Roman Republic
A Writer's Nationality and Individual Genius
L'Allegro & Il Penseroso
All Men Are Mad
The Speeches of Moloch & the Rest
People of Different Sections
Gaining or Exercising Public Influence
Titles of Books
Sublimity
The General Obligation
to Tell the Truth
"Being Content with Common Reasons"
The Duty, Inconvenience and Dangers of
Conformity
Moral Excellence
Barbarities of Civilized States
T. Pomponius Atticus
Class Book Autobiography
"The Commercial Spirit of Modern Times"
Miscellanie?
DIED . . . Miss Anna Jones
Aulus Persius Flaccus
The Laws of Menu
Sayings of Confucius
Dark Ages
Chinese Four Books
Homer. Ossian. Chaucer.
Hermes Trismegistus . . . From the Gulistan of Saadi
Sir Walter Raleigh
Thomas Carlyle and His Works
Love
Chastity & Sensuality