1. Alex Rinkus
Academic Research & Writing
Dr. Rasmussen
4/5/13
An Analysis of Various Annotated Editions of Walden
When a writer annotates a literary work, their central purpose is to construct a
bridge from the work in its original form and meaning to readers of a later time period,
making it applicable to them without distorting its authorial intention. Thus, the numerous
annotated editions made of the classic work Walden by Henry David Thoreau after its
original publication in 1854, take substantially different forms in reflection of their
different temporal readerships. Similar to the book reviews, when examined side-by-side
the various generations of these annotated editions end up landscaping the fluctuations of
the collective conscience of Walden’s readers. The three editions I’ve selected, published in
1910, 1960, and 2004 respectively, convey a societal drift in the opposite direction of
Thoreau’s moral guidance, away from nature and self-reliance in favor of technological
development and efficiency. However, this growing separation does little to sully the
editors’ admiration for Walden’s ideals and criticism of society, which if anything became
more relevant and appealing to people’s daily lives as a source of wisdom derived from
nature, though less practical as an actual path to follow in one’s life.
One could write endless volumes about the ways in which American society has
changed since the time when “Walden” was written, but the lessons found within it have
always been aimed backwards in time against the progress of civilization, which Thoreau
saw as a detachment from mankind’s place in nature and consequently a departure from

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our understanding of our own nature. In an introduction to Walden made in 1910, J. Milnor
Dorey, an A. M. instructor in English with a degree from Harvard, affirms Thoreau’s idea
that “Happiness does not come from adding to the machinery of civilization, but in reducing
it to its lowest terms,” adding, “If we all cannot follow his lead, then we have learned
something about the relation of industry to leisure, and the doctrine of contentment.”1 In
relating industry to leisure and contentment, Dorey demonstrates a shift in focus over
concern of industry; where Thoreau was concerned that it led people to enslave themselves
to excessive amounts of mindless work for the sake of money and unnecessary possessions,
Dorey feared that the industrial technology Thoreau never saw proliferate, such as cars,
refrigerators, and laundry machines, would provide us with such convenience that we
would become captured not by work but by leisure itself.
Dorey’s fear became a concrete reality by 1960, as Perry Miller, a historian and
Harvard professor, said of Walden in an afterword,
(It) remains true, and even more bewildering, today, because with the
intensification of our material order, the augmentation of machines, luxuries,
devices, media, gadgets, Walden is infinitely more antagonistic to the dominant
pattern of our civilization than it was to the relatively pastoral America of 1854.2
Rather than being a guide towards inner peace and happiness, the themes in Walden
became so at odds with our society that it was instead predominately perceived as
“antagonistic” by many readers like Miller that became daunted by the gravity of the social
detachment it now implied. Yet Walden remained a treasure to these readers, not in the
sense of being a guide, but instead being a source of wisdom that had become almost
1 Dorey, 21
2 Miller, 299

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unknowable to Americans otherwise, as Perry writes, “In Walden our lumpish humanity
becomes glorious even unto itself as it is suffused by the profound self-knowledge that
Henry Thoreau discovered beside the pond.”3
This departure from practicality became evident long before the turn of the
millennium, wherein technology brought not only convenience, but also nearly infinite
distraction with the rise of television, cellphones, the Internet and social media, which
together have made apathy a trap much more easily sprung in our time. In lieu of all of this,
Jeffrey S. Cramer, who annotated Walden in 2004, chose to establish a sort of postmodern
approach for his readers in his introduction, pointing out that Thoreau meant for his book
to ask questions that would produce different answers from generation to generation, as
well as from person to person.4 Not only that, but Cramer goes so far as to try and nullify
Thoreau’s role as a real-world example of an application of his own writings by citing
quotes from Thoreau himself on how he cared little about making sure Walden contained
fact, how he had not intended for it to be taken as autobiography, how he believed that he
portrayed the best of himself in his writings while his real person was no cause for self-
congratulation, and how really, “Mythology was clearly what Thoreau was writing. If one
reads Walden in any way other than the way it was intended to be read, the reader is
predisposed to failure.”5 In this way Cramer directs the reader’s attention away from even
trying to read Walden with an eye seeking to follow Thoreau as an example of how to live
one’s life, but rather to seek in it allegorical truth like that of ancient Greek mythology,
everywhere defending this viewpoint as Thoreau’s original intention with regular quotes
3 Perry, 303
4 Cramer, 24
5 Cramer, 21-22

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from the him describing that which he admired in contemporary author’s works such as
James Wilkinson’s The Human Body, of which he says that, “(it) to some extent realizes
what I have dreamed of, a return to the primitive and analogical derivative sense of
words.”6 Taking his words as analogy rather than guidance allows the reader to take in
Walden without the responsibility to follow Thoreau’s example that Dorey instilled in his
readers, or the antagonism that Miller believed to have become a core element in its
relationship to modern society. Rather than having to ask questions like how one would
find a way to live on only the bare essentials as Thoreau did when our world has been built
to be traversable almost necessarily by car, or how to embrace the natural world when it
has nearly become eradicated from the places we live, instead we are led to ask how to find
happiness within ourselves and not allow it to be contingent on outside forces within our
own context.
Whether one chooses to receive Walden as a call to reject of society or as a
guidebook for how to live within society without letting it dictate one’s happiness, the fact
remains that it brings some form of inspiration to generation after generation of readers,
and remains one of the most well-known and influential works written in the English
language. It stands as a reminder of a wisdom that came from a time when we lived at the
mercy of natural forces, when one had to trust in their own self-reliance for not only
survival, but for understanding and ultimately happiness, a wisdom that becomes rarer
with every new road paved, every new town built, and every new technology developed. It
tells us of what it means to have a human nature, that we might hold it in our minds even as
our society pulls us further and further away from it.
6 Cramer, 25