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Thoreau's Journal Drawings

Name: Thoreau's Journal Drawings
Brand: UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS PRESS
SKU: 9781625349422
Price: 80.99 AUD
Availability: InStock

UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS PRESSISBN: 9781625349422

The Power of the Visual

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$80.99

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By Kathleen Coyne Kelly
Imprint: UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS PRESS
Release Date: September 10, 2026
Format: PAPERBACK
Dimensions: 229 x 152 mm
Weight:
Pages: 344

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Examining journal drawings as an integral-and often delightful-feature of Thoreau's work In 1850, Henry David Thoreau began to draw in his Journal-a hedgehog's quill, a locust's wing, a goldenrod leaf. The sketches reflect his efforts to train his eye to observe more carefully, to look closely enough that he could see what was in front of him-with intention and attention. As Thoreau worked to combine the vivid language of a writer with the precision of a scientist, his drawings became more vital to the process. For him, writing and drawing were not separate activities; they were part of the same active, hands-on process of learning about the natural world. Thoreau's Journal Drawings offers a sustained examination of an understudied aspect of the Journal, emphasizing visual as well as textual analysis. It places Thoreau's illustrated entries in the broader context of nineteenth-century scientific illustration, nature writing, and visual culture, while also offering close readings of key passages in which text and image work in tandem. The book opens up new possibilities for interpretation-both within the Journal and in the larger project of Thoreau's thinking. Ultimately, Thoreau's illustrated Journal offers a case study in the complexities of representing the natural world through both language and image. His practice raises enduring questions about how we document, interpret, and mediate the more-than-human world across different forms of expression. To read the later volumes of Henry David Thoreau's Journal without attending to his drawings is to overlook a vital dimension of his practice as both writer and observer.

Kathleen Coyne Kelly is professor of English at Northeastern University and editor of The Concord Saunterer: A Journal of Thoreau Studies. She is the author of the Thoreau-inspired Field Notebook, published by the Thoreau Society, and the textbook Reading to Write: A Practical Rhetoric, as well as Performing Virginity and Testing Chastity in the Middle Ages and A. S. Byatt: A Study. Her work on Thoreau has appeared in NEQ: New England Quarterly, the Thoreau Society Bulletin, The Concord Saunterer, and the edited volume Henry David Thoreau in Context.

"In this impressive new book, each chapter offers an approach to Thoreau studies that centers on a drawing and leads into a rich avenue of inquiry that draws on an expansive range of scholarship. Kathleen Coyne Kelly has the potential to reshape how we read Thoreau. No one has made such a comprehensive case for the importance of his drawings." - John J. Kucich, author of Unsettling Thoreau: Native Americans, Settler Colonialism, and the Power of Place "Kelly invites us to re-think the Thoreau we think we know, even for those of us who think we know him quite well. At once witty, smart, and deeply informed, Kelly's tour through Thoreau's drawings takes us on an historical, literary, and environmental adventure that reveals a more nuanced and complex Thoreau. Her prose is clear, concise, and smart-at times humorous, at times personal, at times deeply moving. Kelly's treatment of the Journal drawings is unlike any book I've encountered on Thoreau." - Rochelle Johnson, author of Passions for Nature: Nineteenth Century America's Aesthetics of Alienation and past president of the Thoreau Society

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