|
Thoreau, Henry David, (introduction & notes by H. Daniel Peck),
A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS. NEW copy. TRADE PAPERBACK.
Penguin Classics. Introduction, suggestions for further reading, map, notes, 335 pages.
|
Thoreau, Henry David,
EARLY ESSAYS AND MISCELLANIES.
VG/VG. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976).
Series: Writings of Henry D.
Thoreau. Elizabeth Hall Witherell, Editor-in-Chief.
~~~ This collection of fifty-three early pieces by Thoreau represents the full
range of his youthful imagination. Collected, arranged, and carefully edited for
the first time here, the writings date from 1828 to 1852 and cover a broad range
of subjects: learning, morals, literature, history, politics, and love. Included
is a major essay on Sir Walter Raleigh that was not published during the
author's lifetime and a fragmentary college piece here published for the first
time. Titles of essays published in the volume are given below.
Early Essays
- The Seasons
- Anxieties and Delights of a Discoverer
- Men Whose Pursuit Is Money
- Of Keeping a Private Journal
- "We Are Apt to Become What Others . . . Think Us to Be"
- Forms, Ceremonies, and Restraints of Polite Society
- A Man of Business, a Man of Pleasure, a Man of the World
- Musings
- Kinds of Energetic Character
- Privileges and Pleasures of a Literary Man
- Severe and Mild Punishments
- Popular Feeling
- Style May . . . Offend against Simplicity
- The Book of the Seasons
- Sir Henry Vane
- Literary Digressions
- Foreign Influence on American Literature
- Life and Works of Sir W. Scott
- The Love of Stories
- Cultivation of the Imagination
- The Greek Classic Poets
- The Meaning of "Fate"
- Whether the Government Ought to Educate
- Travellers & Inhabitants
- History . . . of the Roman Republic
- A Writer's Nationality and Individual Genius
- L'Allegro & Il Penseroso
- All Men Are Mad
- The Speeches of Moloch & the Rest
- People of Different Sections
- Gaining or Exercising Public Influence
- Titles of Books
- Sublimity
- The General Obligation to Tell the Truth
- "Being Content with Common Reasons"
- The Duty, Inconvenience and Dangers of Conformity
- Moral Excellence
- Barbarities of Civilized States
- T. Pomponius Atticus
- Class Book Autobiography
- "The Commercial Spirit of Modern Times"
Miscellanies
- DIED . . . Miss Anna Jones
- Aulus Persius Flaccus
- The Laws of Menu
- Sayings of Confucius
- Dark Ages
- Chinese Four Books
- Homer. Ossian. Chaucer.
- Hermes Trismegistus . . . From the Gulistan of Saadi
- Sir Walter Raleigh
- Thomas Carlyle and His Works
- Love
- Chastity & Sensuality
~~~ Currently in print at $95.
|
Thoreau, Henry David, (Louis Hyde, ed),
THE ESSAYS OF HENRY D. THOREAU.
NEW copy, trade PAPERBACK.
(North Point Press, 2002). Illustrations, annotations,
bibliography, index, 390 pages.
~~~ With The Essays of Henry D. Thoreau, Lewis Hyde
gathers thirteen of Thoreau's finest short prose works and,
for the first time in 150 years, presents them fully
annotated and arranged in the order of their composition.
This definitive edition includes Thoreau's most famous
essays, 'Civil Disobedience' and 'Walking,' along with
lesser-known masterpieces such as 'Wild Apples,' 'The Last
Days of John Brown,' and an account of his 1846 journey into
the Maine wilderness to climb Mount Katahdin, an essay that
ends on a unique note of sublimity and terror.
|
Thoreau, Henry David,
THE MAINE WOODS, A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS,
WALDEN.
NEW copies, three hardcover volumes together in box.
(Book of the Month Club). Illustrated with photographs.
This edition OUT OF PRINT.
|
Thoreau, Henry David.
THREE COMPLETE BOOKS: THE
MAINE WOODS, WALDEN, CAPE COD.
NEW copy, hardcover in pictorial
dust jacket. (Gramercy Books, 1993). 536 pp.
|
Thoreau, Henry David,
WALDEN: One Hundred Fiftieth Anniversary Edition.
NEW copy, hardcover with dust jacket.
(Shambhala Publications, Inc., 2004). Illustrated with
woodcuts by Michael McCurdy. 303 pages.
~~~ "In July 1845, Henry David Thoreau built a small
cottage in the woods near Walden Pond in Concord,
Massachusetts. during the two years and two months he spent
there, he began to write Walden, his most important
work, a chronicle of his communion with nature that became
one of the most influential and compelling books in American
literature. Since its first publication on August 9, 1854,
by Ticknor and Fields, the work has become a classic,
beloved for its message of living simply and in harmony with
nature.  This special 150th anniversary edition of
Walden features exquisite wood engravings by Michael
McCurdy, one of America's leading engravers and woodblock
artists. McCurdy's engravings bring the text to life --
and illuminate the spirit of Thoreau's prose. Also included is a foreword by noted author, environmentalist, and naturalist Terry Tempest Williams, who reflects upon Thoreau's message that as we explore our world and ourselves, we draw ever closer to the truth of our connectedness."
|
Thoreau, Henry David (edited by Walter Harding),
WALDEN: An Annotated Edition.
NEW copy, still in shrinkwrap.
Hardcover issued without dust jacket. (Houghton, Mifflin & Co,
1995). 352 pages.
~~~ "On July 4, 1845, Henry David Thoreau moved into
the cabin he had built on the shore of Walden Pond, thus
beginning the most famous experiment in simple
living in American history. On the 150th anniversary of that
event, Houghton Mifflin, successor to Thoreau's original
publisher, is proud to publish a new edition of Walden,
annotated by the distinguished Thoreau scholar Walter Harding
and illustrated with Thoreau's own drawings. Even those who
have read Walden many times will find much that is
new in this edition, and those reading the book for the
first time will discover why it has changed the lives of
generations of readers.
|
Thoreau, Henry David,
WILD FRUITS: Thoreau's Rediscovered Last Manuscript.
NEW copy, hardcover with dust jacket. (NY: WW Norton, 2000). First Edition.
Edited and introduced by Bradley P. Dean; illustrated by Abigail Rorer.
Maps on end pages.
Related passages; chronology; glossary of botanical terms; a note on the provenance
of the manuscript; editor's notes; works cited; index, 409 pages.
~~~ From Kirkus Reviews: A work that has escaped publication since Thoreau
wrote it, Wild Fruits will only strengthen the author's renown for his unique
voice. A keeper of the Thoreau flame and Thoreau scholar, Bradley Dean (editor of a
similar Thoreau work, Faith in a Seed, 1993, prematurely described in these pages as
"no doubt [the] final Thoreau book of the century"), has now transcribed and brought
to life still another of the Concord naturalist and philosopher's manuscripts that was
never published in his lifetime. It is, as Dean wisely characterizes it, both a
sacramental and scriptural work. The product of years of naturalistic observation,
these lovely essays—some extended, some as short as a sentence—about flowers, bushes,
and trees were originally culled by their author for lectures he delivered. They reveal
his characteristic Transcendentalist views, his never-ending search "to find God in
nature." A mix of empirical science, philosophical speculation, and occasionally tart
wit, they are wonderfully pleasing for the knowledge they evince and for their calm,
melodious cadences. Fortunately, too, Thoreau the keen and distinctive thinker is
ever-present. Indignant, for example, at his contemporaries' failure to appreciate
the huckleberry, he likens their obtuseness to the loss of "natural rights," thus
giving fresh meaning to an ancient term. While never intruding on—in fact, scarcely
explaining—Thoreau's prose, Dean artfully provides notes glossing terms, names, and
references that might be obscure to a modern reader. He thus makes this 150-year-old
work fully accessible to everyone. A work of often incandescent prose likely to find
many readers among historians, naturalists,literary scholars, and, most of all, those
who have long loved and learned from the author of Walden and other beloved texts.
~~~ Paperback currently in print at $17.95. Hardcover originally published at $29.95, now OUT OF PRINT.
|
[Thoreau] Willard H. Bonner,
HARP ON THE SHORE: Thoreau and the Sea.
NEW copy. Laminated hardcover without dust jacket, as issued.
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985).
Completed and edited by George R. Levine. Bibliography, index, 129 pages.
~~~ The author's purpose here "is to
explicate Thoreau's numerous nautical metaphors and to
demonstrate their importance for understanding his work."
~~~ (Choice)
~~~ From Donald Yannella, American Literature:
This posthumously published study (drafts of which appeared
in articles from 1963 to 1976) is not revisionist
but useful . . . . The more engaging part of this small book,
the latter four of its eight chapters, concentrates on
Thoreau's voyage within . . . Perhaps the penultimate
chapter, where (Bonner) explores Thoreau's admiration of
Robinson Crusoe, is the most provocative, or at least
refreshing . . . Bonner and his first-mate Levine offer a
log of the images, references, vehicles, and contexts in
cod grounds pretty well fished out in fresh breezes. The
vessel is light and the charts will not steer us through
gales and high seas to depths in which a grand armada
swims.
Currently in print at $59.50.
|
[Thoreau] Gordon V. Boudreau,
THE ROOTS OF WALDEN AND THE TREE OF LIFE.
NEW copy, hardcover with dust jacket. Still in shrinkwrap.
(Vanderbilt: Vanderbilt University Press). Bibliography, index.
~~~ This is an account of Thoreau's creative process.
Boudreau finds the 'roots' of Walden in Thoreau's
journals and in his first book, A Week on the Concord and
Merrimack Rivers. By examining those sources and by
contrasting Thoreau's intellectual temperament with
Emerson's, Boudreau . . . {posits}two grand natural forces
shaping Thoreau's thinking and writing--the law of currents
and the law of vegetation, expressed metaphorically in
Thoreau's two books as the tree of the fall and the tree of
life."
|
[Thoreau] William Ellery Channing,
THOREAU: THE POET-NATURALIST. With Memorial Verses.
Rare first edition of Thoreau's first biography. Roberts Brothers, 1873.
|
[Thoreau] Walter Harding,
THE DAYS OF HENRY THOREAU: A Biography.
NEW copy. trade PAPERBACK. (Princeton: Princeton University
Press). Book of the Month Club.
~~~ Henry David Thoreau is generally remembered as
the author of Walden and "Civil Disobedience", a
recluse of the woods and a political protester who once went
to jail. To his contemporaries he was a minor disciple of
Emerson; he has since joined the ranks of America's most
respected and beloved writers. Few, however, really know
the complexity of the man they revere--wanderer and scholar,
naturalist and humorist, teacher and surveyor, abolitionist
and poet, Transcendentalist and anthropologist, inventor and
social critic, and, above all, individualist. In this widely
acclaimed biography, the eminent Thoreau scholar Walter
Harding presents all of these Thoreaus. Scholars will find
here the culmination of a lifetime of research and study,
meticulously documented, while general readers will find an
absorbing story of a remarkable man. Writing with supreme
lucidity, Harding has marshaled all the facts so as best to
"let them speak for themselves." Thoreau's thoughtfulness
and stubbornness, his more than ordinarily human amalgam of
the earthy and sublime, his unquenchable vitality emerge to
the reader as they did to his own family, friends, and
critics. The new afterword evaluates new scholarship about
Thoreau.
|
[Thoreau] Robert D. Richardson, Jr.,
HENRY THOREAU: A Life of the Mind.
NEW copy, trade PAPERBACK.
(Berkeley: University of California Press) 455 pages.
~~~ Biography of Henry Thoreau from 1837, when he was
finishing college, to his death in 1862, based on a
reexamination of his manuscripts and on a retracing of his
trips, offering a full view of Thoreau's life and
achievements.
|
|
|
Cole, Phyllis,
MARY MOODY EMERSON AND THE ORIGINS OF TRANSCENDENTALISM: A Family History.
Oxford University Press, 2002. NEW copy. TRADE PAPERBACK. 370 pages. "In this magisterial work of feminist archaeology, Phyllis Cole recovers Mary Moody Emerson’s life in the contexts of late New England Calvinism, the Emerson family, women’s opportunities in the early republic and Mary’s own crusty personality."
|
Barbour, Brian M. (ed),
AMERICAN TRANSCENDENTALISM: An Anthology of Criticism. VG/VG. University of Notre Dame Press, 1973.
Notes, bibliography, index, 302 pages.
~~~ "This collection of critical essays views transcendentalism from many different perspectives, noting the movement's failure to grasp the complex social realities of its time. An extensive and valuable bibliography is included. The first section introduces the world of transcendentalism and its peculiar vocabulary. The transcendentalist attitude toward nature is examined, as is its faith that spiritual truth was immediately available to all. The next part attempts to place the movement in the history of ideas. How did New England produce the transcententalism of Emerson less than a century after it had known the Calvinism of Jonathan Edwards? How important was the influence of Coleridge, Kant, and the French Ectectics? Why did Ripley's attempt to combine transcendentalism and socialism at the Brook Farm community prove so short-lived? A theological retrospect of the movement reviews the development of Unitarianism, analyzes the response to Emerson's 'Divinity School Address' and examines transcendentalism's inability to cope with the horrors of the Civil War. The foremost transcendentalist was Emerson. His resignation from the ministry is discussed and his life contrated with that of Orestes Brownson. Henry James gives a personal evaluation of Emerson's importance to the phenomenon, and a final essay contains a highly astringent moral criticism of the movement -- the possible latent effect of Emerson's ideas on Hart Crane."
~~~ OUT OF PRINT.
|
Barbour, Brian M. (ed),
EMERSON ON TRANSCENDENTALISM.
NEW copy, trade PAPERBACK. (Continuum International Publishing Group).
"Milestones of Thought" series.
Notes, bibliography, index, 1092 pages.
~~~ The full texts of four seminal works by Emerson are presented in this volume:
'Nature,' 'The American Scholar, ' 'The Divinity School Address,' and 'The
Transcendentalist.' Edward Ericson assesses that impact in his helpful
introduction and evaluates anew Emerson's continuing influence on American
culture in our century.
|
|
|
[Twain] Andrew Hoffman,
INVENTING MARK TWAIN: The Lives of Samuel Langhorne Clemens VG/NF. In almost new condition, except that the corners of several pages have been bent and reflattened. hardcover with dust jacket. William Morrow and Company, 1997. First Edition. Photographs, notes, bibliography, index, 572 pages.
~~~ From Kirkus Reviews: "This brisk double profile ably traces the career of America's greatest literary celebrity, ark Twain, while drawing a full portrait of his progenitor, Samuel Clemens. For novelist and scholar Hoffman, Clemens was an insecure if sympathetically brilliant narcissist, desperate to rewrite his past and secure his future. Thus he created the Mark Twain persona: a masterstroke of self-creation and self-promotion that Hoffman considers nothing less than the 'inspired ad-hoc invention of fame.' Hoffman seeks to reconstruct what Clemens actually experienced before he edited and capitalized on his life. Thus, the Mississippi is the tragic scene of Clemens's father's doomed struggle to support his family. Hoffman illuminates several years of Clemens's life about which he never wrote, when his teenage rebelliousness led him to leave home and become an itinerant typesetter and newspaper columnist. A career as a riverboat pilot was interrupted by the Civil War, which Clemens sat out reporting for newspapers in Nevada and California. Hoffman deftly explores the romantic relationships with men that Clemens conducted in his years out west, placing them in the contexts of both boomtown mining culture and also the literary bohemianism that Clemens increasingly came to embrace. Local fame in San Francisco led to successful lectures in the east; soon Mark Twain's brilliant travel writing was earning top dollar. But adroit as the narrative of these years is, Hoffman's account of the creation of the great novels, particularly The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is thin, and by the time he reaches the eventual wreck of Clemens's investments and the tragic deaths of two of his daughters, his commentary has become less insightful. Even Clemens's final years as a terrifying iconoclast come off muted. While Hoffman doesn't capture the full spectrum of his subject's achievements and disasters, he does convincingly picture Samuel Clemens's personality: a character interesting not least for his powerful ambivalence towards his astoundingly successful public alter ego."
Originally published at $30, now OUT OF PRINT.
|
|
|
