By Elizabeth Witherell

On Nov. 14, 2007, a UCSB graduate student transcribed the final lines of the last passage of American naturalist and social philosopher Henry D. Thoreau’s hand-written manuscript for his personal journal. In that passage Thoreau describes the effect produced by a driving rain on the pebble-strewn sand of a railroad causeway. Each pebble has protected a ridge of sand that extends behind it, revealing the direction from which the wind came. “All this is perfectly distinct to an observant eye,” Thoreau concludes, “yet could easily pass unnoticed by most. Thus each wind is self-registering.”

This concluded the UCSB-based Thoreau Edition’s project to read and transcribe each of the approximately two million words in the forty-seven manuscript volumes of the Journal. It’s an effort that has taken a good deal longer than the 24 years it took Thoreau to write it. Of course, Thoreau wrote almost every day and knew what he was writing, while the transcribing has been much less concentrated and we have to decipher his challenging hand.

Take the third word in the last sentence of the Journal. Is it really “wind” or could it be “mind”? In Thoreau’s hand, “m” and “w” can look exactly alike. In this case, context helps, making “wind” more likely. Sometimes what Thoreau wrote looks like little more than a series of bumps. In addition to context, a knowledge of Thoreau’s usual subjects and diction, as well as the vocabulary of 19th-century New England, come into play.

Many of the puzzles that arise during transcription are resolved in on-the-spot discussions in the office or in later proofreading by staff members and editors. Most of the remainder disappear when the transcripts are read against the original manuscript pages at the Morgan Library in New York City.

The Journal was my introduction to working with manuscripts. I still find it thrilling to be turning over the pages Thoreau himself handled, and over time I’ve realized that though the Journal volumes are now the objects of care bordering on reverence, for Thoreau they were simply utilitarian. He tore out pages, pasted in newspaper clippings, pressed plants, and waxed on scraps containing relevant notes.

The manuscripts have gradually taught me how to read them for more than the words they contain. I notice that Thoreau finished filling his last store-bought notebook in January1856; after that he used groups of about a hundred sheets folded, punched, sewn, and bound, which were probably cheaper.

Thoreau’s process of composition after 1850 or 1851 involved making abbreviated notes in pencil on folded sheets of paper during his daily walks; in his Journal he often expanded the notes from several days at a time. I understand that a Journal volume from 1855 in which Thoreau writes from both ends to the middle represents his solution to a problem presented when, because of illness, he fell behind in writing entries based on his notes.

The printed Journal will be the Thoreau Edition’s most important product: The only other edition, published in 1906, omitted whole categories of information that we restore, and we’ve included several hundred printed pages of new material. But the published volumes will only be as good as our understanding of the manuscripts, and finishing the transcription is just the beginning of that process.

A page of the Journal and our transcript of it are on view at <www.library.ucsb.edu/thoreau/writings_handwritingP.html>; another Journal page can be seen in the slideshow linked to Megan Marshall’s piece, “The Impossible Art of Deciphering Manuscripts,” <http://www.slate.com/id/2183903>. The transcripts for manuscript volumes 18 through 33 are at <http://www.library.ucsb.edu/thoreau/writings_journals.html>.

Elizabeth Witherell is editor-in-chief of
The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau Project.