The Story of My Boyhood and Youth

When I picked this book us, to get a glimpse into frontier life, I didn't know that Muir went on to form the Sierra Club. The book was pleasant enough. One gets some idea of life for immigrants in Wisconsin; but, I'd not be surprised if there are better books on the topic. Unexpectedly, I found some of Muir's observations on animal behavior to be interesting, and while his anthropomorphism of animals is explicit, it is not off-putting by being incessant. The last couple of chapters were a pleasant surprise, when the autobiography turned away from his farm, and spoke about him leaving home.

I listened to this book using the free Librivox recording: http://librivox.org/the-story-of-my-boyhood-and-youth-by-john-muir/

“This sudden plash into pure wilderness – baptism in Nature’s warm heart, how utterly happy it made us! Nature streaming into us, wooingly teaching, preaching her glorious living lessons, … we still were at school; every lesson a love lesson…” P.62

Original illustrated green cloth with black decorations, gilt stamped titles, TEG, binding tight, octavo, 296 pp. Frontispiece portrait of Muir with tissue guard, and 9 illustrated plates tipped in from sketches by the author. First Print - sentence on Page 217 not corrected, stating: “But, strange to say… none was bold enough or kind enough to break the blacksmith’s jaw”. Date on bottom ffep inked “Christmas 1913”, newspaper clipping attached to rear pastdown & show more associated yellowing to rear fep. Muir published this autobiography at the age of 75 and passed the following year.

This work tells of his early years in his native Dunbar, East Lothian, Scotland, his first forays into the study of nature, and then the 1849 announcement by his father with one day's notice that the family was emigrating to America. Transplanted to the New World at the age of eleven, Muir describes how he helped his family create a new life from raw field in Wisconsin. When not working as a farm laborer, he self-educated and took to inventing all manner of clock and calendar-based devices. Concurrently his interest in the natural world began to take serious form. At the age of 22, without completing formal schooling, Muir enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studying botany and chemistry, and then moved on to what he called the 'university of the wilderness’. Kimes 315 show less

The book is a biography and is simple in content, easy to read, none too exciting. Knowing that the book is about John Muir adds an element of interest which turns a run-of-the-mill biography into something worth reading.