CONCORD RIVER: Selections from the Journals of William Brewster

In "October Farm," of which "Concord River" is in a sense a sequel, the story is told of the part played by the Reverend Smith Owen Dexter in selecting excerpts from Brewster's Concord diary. Mr. Dexter died before the task was finished, and the extracts lay about for some time before I was able to offer them for publication. A portion of them was published late in 1936, and through "October Farm" Brewster the became known to a widening circle. The first edition was soon exhausted and a second appeared. It is quite evident that we should have published two volumes of diary to Start with — perhaps even more. The excerpts in the present book are indistinguishable in quality from those that have already appeared. Brewster always wrote with superb simplicity and utter selflessness, and curiously enough the ultimate result was the same whether he dashed off an entry late at night or whether, as in the introduction to his "Birds of the Cambridge Region," he wrote and recast a passage times without number until he himself was completely satisfied