Prophet in the Marketplace: Thoreau's Development as a Professional Writer

Thoreau wanted to be both a prophet and a professional, and although his ideals often clashed with the demands of the reading public, he was compelled to respond to a complex and evolving literary marketplace. By focusing on the economic relationship between writer and reader in antebellum America, Steven Fink not only reveals the early professional ambitions of the "hermit of Walden Pond" as conveyed in his writings, but also illuminates the nature of nineteenth-century publishing. The author shows Thoreau to have been, from his first publications, sensitive to questions of audience and literary markets, and traces his evolving professionalism through the various trials and errors of his career, demonstrating how these professional considerations profoundly shaped his writings. This book concentrates on Thoreau's development in the pre-Walden years, when he wrote moral essays, literary criticism, reform essays, nature sketches, and travel narratives for a full range of literary media--from popular magazines to publications for the intellectual elite. Relying on historical and biographical research, Fink offers new information on the public response to Thoreau's works and on Thoreau's own sense of his life as a writer, and provides important readings of individual texts.