The Life and Letters of John Muir by William Frederic Badè were originally published by Houghton Mifflin  in 1923 and 1924. It combines elements of John Muir’s unfinished autobiography with letters selected from the voluminous correspondence between Muir and his many collaborators and admirers, linked by Badè’s commentary. William Frederic Badè, a close friend of Muir’s was designated as Muir’s literary executor by Muir’s two surviving daughters, and edition to this work, posthumously published several of Muir’s other unfinished books. The Life and Letters was published in two volumes, and was also included as the final volumes of multi-volume collection in The Writings of John Muir.

Volume 1 covers his ancestral background in Scotland, life on a Wisconsin farm, the sojourn in Canada, travels from Indiana to California, and the earlier Yosemite years through 1873. Volume 2 takes up where volume 1 left off in 1973, and continues on through subsequent decades, including travels in Nevada, Alaska, his years as a family man on his Alhambra Valley fruit ranch, and his conservation campaigns to protect the forests, Yosemite Valley, and the Hetch Hetchy Valley, up to Muir’s death in 1914. A final Chapter by Badè addreses “His Public Service” and includes Muir’s impassioned plea written on Muir’s 70th birthday, April 21, 1908, to President Theodore Roosevelt to save the Hetch Hetchy Valley. The freshness of Muir’s letters to family members, friends, and even the President of the United States, make for some of the best reading of Muir’s vast repertoire.

The complete text of the first edition can be read on the John Muir Exhibit website. 

In 1996, The Mountaineers in Seattle and Baton Wicks in London published a modern edition of The Life and Letters of John Muir, Edited and introduced by Terry Gifford, in the second omnibus of Muir’s writings compiled by Terry Gifford (following John Muir – The Eight Wilderness-Discovery Books , (Diadem/The Mountaineers, 1992). See 1996 press release.

Since then, some simple reprints in print or ebook formats have been made, which lack the additional features of the one hundredth anniversary edition below, includig a previously unpublished audiobook.