Is there a text version of Thoreau's Jornal? (the entire journal)

February 22, 2013 7:26 AM

Walden.org offers his complete journal as PDFs, which I'm reading, but the scans are terrible and it is hard to slog through them. I have googled and amazoned looking for better versions without luck. I can find excellent quality examples of selected items, but I'm looking for the entire thing, all 14 volumes for my ereader.
posted by gregg to writing & language (3 answers total)

This probably contains what you need (but again they're unattractive PDFs): http://thoreau.library.ucsb.edu/writings_journals.html
posted by davemack at 7:52 AM on February 22

You might try batch converting the PDFs to epub or other suitable format, though the results will almost certainly be imperfect without some manual touching up. The mobileread forums could offer some help - here's a thread with some relevant discussion.
posted by exogenous at 9:01 AM on February 22

Google Books has a 1949 edition that you can download if (big if) you have a partner login at Hathi Trust.

Apparently you can submit titles for consideration for Project Gutenberg, and the originals are clearly in the public domain. Honestly, I'm surprised it's not there already.
posted by wnissen at 3:14 AM on February 23