The fortune of Henry Thoreau as an author of books has been peculiar,
and such as to indicate more permanence of his name and fame than
could be predicted of many of his contemporaries. In the years of his
literary activity (twenty-five in all), from 1837 to 1862,--when he
died, not quite forty-five years old,--he published but two volumes,
and those with much delay and difficulty in finding a publisher. But
in the thirty-two years after his death, nine volumes were published
from his manuscripts and fugitive pieces,--the present being the
tenth. Besides these, two biographies of Thoreau had appeared in
America, and two others in England, with numerous reviews and sketches
of the man and his writings,--enough to make several volumes more.
Since 1894 other biographies and other volumes have appeared, and now
his writings in twenty volumes are coming from the press. The sale of
his books and the interest in his life are greater than ever; and he
seems to have grown early into an American classic, like his Concord
neighbors, Emerson and Hawthorne. Pilgrimages are made to his grave
and his daily haunts, as to theirs,--and those who come find it to be
true, as was said by an accomplished woman (Miss Elizabeth Hoar) soon
after his death, that "Concord is Henry's monument, adorned with
suitable inscriptions by his own hand."