“THE BEST BOOK THAT HAS EVER BEEN WRITTEN ABOUT CAPE COD”: FIRST EDITION OF THOREAU’S CAPE COD

THOREAU, Henry David. Cape Cod. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1865. Octavo, original green blind- and gilt-stamped cloth rebacked with original spine laid down, brown coated endpapers. $2200.

First edition, in original cloth.

"On October 9, 1849, Thoreau set out… for a week's tour on Cape Cod, wishing, as he said, 'to get a better view than I had yet had of the ocean.' Before he was done with the Cape, he would have a better view not only of the ocean and the shore but of early New England…" The book makes use of essays from the 1849 trip as the thread of the narrative and weaves materials as well from his subsequent 1850 and 1855 trips. Filled with jokes and tall tales and digressions on the history of the Cape, "Cape Cod is [also] Thoreau's exploration of salvation, of how, if at all, man is (to be) saved… The sense of being alone, the fate of bare unaccommodated man, the bleak emptiness of death is strongest in Cape Cod of all Thoreau's writings" (Richardson, Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind, 201, 215). "Unquestionably the best book that has ever been written about Cape Cod and it is the model to which all new books about the Cape are still compared" (Harding, The Days of Henry Thoreau, 361). BAL binding variant D (no priority determined). Issued with 24-page publisher's catalogue at rear, dated December 1864. BAL 20115. Borst A5.1a1. Bookplate.

Interior clean, cloth handsome. An extremely good copy.