Thoreau's Wilderness Education: Structure And Unity In "The Maine Woods"

To date there has been no full-length study of Thoreau's The Maine Woods. Most critics set aside the work as travel and nature writing, primarily because of its outward structure. Seemingly, the book is simply three travel essays united by little more than a similarity of subject matter and genre. Added to this problem is the fact that the first two sections of The Maine Woods were originally published in magazines as essays complete in themselves; yet when they were published posthumously as The Maine Woods they remained essentially the same. These factors suggest that Thoreau did not or had not been able to revise the essays, or to condense or unify the events into the topical or thematic approach he had given to his Walden and Cape Cod experiences.