By Andrea Estrada

During his lifetime, naturalist and social philosopher Henry David Thoreau saw only two of his books in print, “Walden” and “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.” Almost 150 years later, the Thoreau Edition at UCSB has produced 14 volumes of Thoreau’s journals as well as writings he prepared for publication.

Another two volumes are scheduled for publication in the next two years, “Excursions,” and “Journal 7: 1854-1894.” By the project’s end a total of 30 volumes will have been completed.

In continued support of the work, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has recently awarded the Thoreau Edition a $100,000 grant and offered matching funds of $60,000. With a gift in that amount from the Barkley Fund, provided through the private nonprofit National Trust for the Humanities, the Thoreau Edition is poised to receive $220,000 over the next three years.

“We’re producing the definitive edition of Thoreau’s work,” explained editor in chief Elizabeth Hall Witherell, a researcher at UCSB who has directed the editorial effort for more than 25 years from different university campuses. “We’re restoring readings as Thoreau intended, and publishing lots of new material, especially in the volumes of Journal and letters.” Princeton University Press publishes the resulting books.

The scope of the Davidson Library-based project covers the contents of all 47 of Thoreau’s handwritten journals, his writings for publication, his correspondence, and other previously uncollected papers. The first volume, “Walden,” was published in 1971. The thorough search for new material and the painstaking nature of the editorial process help to explain why the project completes a new volume only once every three years.

The journal volumes, for example, are based on line-for-line transcripts of handwritten manuscripts, and production of each volume requires careful deciphering of Thoreau’s almost illegible handwriting. “We examine every word, sometimes every letter, to understand and confirm what we see on the page,” said Witherell. “We compare words and letters in other passages to make sure we’re reading them correctly.”

Equally time-consuming is documentating editorial decisions. The Thoreau Edition version of the journals provides lists of Thoreau’s alterations, and of any changes or judgment calls the editors have made.

Thoreau kept journals for 24 years, from 1837 to 1861; the Thoreau Edition’s version of the work constitutes its most significant contribution to Thoreau scholarship, notes Witherell.

In 2001, the project added a new component that makes its unedited transcripts available on the Thoreau Project’s Web site <http://www.library.ucsb.edu/thoreau/>.