A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers - Hardcover

Thoreau, Henry David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691063761 ISBN 13: 9780691063768

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1980

Synopsis

In the late summer of 1839 Thoreau and his elder brother John made a two-week boat-and-hiking trip from Concord, Massachusetts, to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. After John's sudden death in 1842, Henry began to prepare a memorial account of their excursion. At Walden Pond he wrote two drafts of this story, which he continued to revise and expand until 1849, when he arranged for its publication at his own expense. The contemporary audience for A Week was troubled by its heterodoxy and apparent formlessness; but modern readers have come to see it as an appropriate predecessor to Walden, with Thoreau's story of a river journey actually depicting the early years of his spiritual and artistic growth.

About this title

From the Back Cover

The Musketquid, or Grass-ground River, though probably as old as the Nile or Euphrates, did not begin to have a place in civilized history, until the fame of its grassy meadows and its fish attracted settlers out of England in 1635, when it received the other but kindred name of Concord from the first plantation on its banks, which appears to have been commenced in a spirit of peace and harmony.

Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 1980
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691063761
• ISBN 13: 9780691063768
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 624
• Editor: Hovde Carl F., Howarth William L., Witherell Elizabeth Hall