the Thoreau Log.
May 1854. New York, N.Y.

Charles Scribner sends a form letter to Thoreau:

  As it is my intention to publish the coming season a work, entitled Art Encyclopaedia of American Literature, embracing Personal and Critical Notices of Authors, with passages from their Writings, from the earliest period to the present day, with Portraits, Autographs, and other illustrations, I have adopted the method of addressing to you a Circular letter, as the best means of rendering the book as complete in regard to points on which you may be interested, as possible, and as faithful as may be to the memories and claims of the families and personages whose literary interests will be represented in it. The plan of the work is to furnish to the public, at one view, notices of the Lives and Writings of all American authors of importance. As it is quite probable you may have in your possession material or information which you would like the opportunity of seeing noticed in such a publication, you will serve the objects of the work by a reply to this circular, in such answers to the following suggestions as may appear desirable or convenient to you.

  1.   Dates of birth, parentage, education, residence, with such biographical information and anecdote; as you may think proper to be employed in such a publication.
  2.   Names and dates of Books published, references to Articles in Reviews, Magazines, &c., of which you may be the author.
  3.   Family notices and sources of information touching American authors no longer living, of whom you may be the representative.

  Dates, facts, and precise information, in reference to points which have not been noticed in collections of this kind, or which may have been misstated, are desirable. Your own judgment will be the best guide as to the material of this nature which should be employed in a work which it is intended shall be of general interest and of a National character. It will represent the whole country, its only aim being to exhibit to the readers a full, fair, and entertaining account of the literary products thus far of America. It is trusted that the plan of the work will engage your sympathy and concurrence, and that you will find in it a sufficient motive for a reply to this Circular. The materials which you may communicate will be employed, so far as is consistent with the limits and necessary unity of the work, for the preparation of which I have engaged Evert A. and George L. Duyckinck, who have been prominently before the public for several years in a similar connection, as Editors of the “Literary World.”

  Yours, respectfully,

  Charles Scribner

(The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, 326-327)

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