17 “A Central Document Of The American Experience” 19THOREAU, Henry David. Walden; Or, Life in the Woods. Boston, 1854. Octavo, original brown cloth. $13,500 First edition of this important American classic, one of only 2000 copies published. “Thoreau’s Walden occupies a special place in our American heritage. Moreover, the book is still alive and vibrant, and it reaches out to touch the life of each one of us who is receptive… it has come to be thought a central document in the American experience” (Thorpe, Treasures of the Huntington Library). “For almost a hundred years an inspiration to nature-lovers, to philosophers, to sociologists… and to persons who love to read the English language written with clarity” (Grolier, 100 American,63). BAL 20106. Magazine photograph of a bust of Thoreau tipped-in opposite title page. Interior generally clean with closed marginal tears to two leaves (165-68), two locations with offsetting from pressed leaves (38-9, 82-83); expert restoration to cloth spine ends. A very attractive copy. First Edition Of Thoreau’s First Book 20THOREAU, Henry David. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Boston and Cambridge, 1849. Octavo, original brown cloth gilt, custom chemise, slipcase. $25,000 First edition, first issue, of Thoreau’s first book, one of only 1000 copies printed and one of less than 400 copies in the publisher’s cloth. In residence at Walden Pond, “Thoreau’s first concentrated effort (was) to assemble, flesh out, and then rearrange material about the trip he and (his brother) John had taken on the Concord and Merrimack rivers… It is the first of the many American books shaped along a river trip, the first in which the river becomes a stream, not just of water or even of time, but of consciousness itself” (Richardson, 155). Despite some good reviews, the first edition (consisting of one thousand copies) did not sell. In 1862, the remainder of 595 copies of the first edition were bought from Thoreau by Ticknor and Fields and rebound with a new title page bearing their imprint. With the bookplate of Arthur Swann. Swann’s collection, known for the excellence of its copies, was auctioned in 1960 at the Parke-Bernet Galleries in New York. In the catalogue for the auction, this copy is described as “an unusually fine copy.” A few contemporary ink marks to text block fore-edge, lower front joint with an expert cloth repair. A beautiful copy.
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