Credit Where Credit Is Due Thank Sophia Thoreau, Henry David Thoreau’s sister, for finishing much of his work. Sophia Thoreau via Wikimedia Commons "The early editions of Henry David Thoreau’s posthumous publications listed no editors. Later, early Thoreau biographers credited Ralph Waldo Emerson and Ellery Channing with putting these editions together and seeing them through publication. But actually, as literature scholar Kathy Fedorko tells us, this work was accomplished by Thoreau’s executor: his sister, Sophia Thoreau." "...During his life, Henry published two books, Walden and A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. This makes the great majority of his work posthumous. It wasn’t until the definitive edition of The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau, a project inaugurated in 1966 and still ongoing (seventeen of a projected twenty-eight volumes have been published by Princeton University Press), that credit started to be given to Sophia Thoreau in earnest rather than to Emerson or Channing." Article: Sophia Thoreau to the Rescue!