Henry S. Salt's Life of Henry David Thoreau
Edited by George & Willene Hendrick, and Fritz Oehlschlaeger
Open Gate Press, 1993, Hardcover, ISBN: 0 900001 42 9, £19.95
University of Illinois Press, Aug 2000, 192pp, ISBN: 0-252-06906-4, $14.95

No Englishman did more in the nineteenth century to advance the literary reputation of Henry David Thoreau than Henry S. Salt. HENRY S. SALT (1851-1939) was a biographer and literary critic who edited several selections of Thoreau's works. A remarkable reformer who participated broadly in his era's movements for social change, Salt published two versions of his Life of Henry David Thoreau. The present volume is the third version of the biography, completed in 1908 but never published in Salt's lifetime. Combining a concise narrative of Thoreau's life with a perceptive treatment of his ideas and writings, Life of Henry David Thoreau stands as a penetrating study of Thoreau, stressing his distinctive individuality. Through an astute analysis of the text and a concise biography, the editors illustrate Salt's growth as a scholar and his changing views on Thoreau and Thoreau's philosophy.

"Of all the biographers of Thoreau, Henry Salt best captures Thoreau's spirit." -- Walter Harding, author of The Days of Henry Thoreau

"A beautifully written and very sympathetic short biography of Thoreau that all Thoreauvians should treasure. . . . Salt was just the person to write about Thoreau. He was in complete sympathy with Thoreau's ideas, and he wrote about them and him beautifully." -- Thoreau Society Journal

Open Gate Press hardcover version pictured left.

GEORGE HENDRICK, professor emeritus of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and FRITZ OEHLSCHLAEGER, professor of English at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, are the coeditors of Toward the Making of Thoreau's Modern Reputation. WILLENE HENDRICK is co-editor, with George Hendrick, of The Savour of Salt: A Henry Salt Anthology.

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