Excursions (Writings of Henry D. Thoreau, 20) - Hardcover

Thoreau, Henry David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691064504 ISBN 13: 9780691064505

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2007

Synopsis

Excursions presents texts of nine essays, including some of Henry D. Thoreau's most engaging and popular works, newly edited and based on the most authoritative versions of each. These essays represent Thoreau in many stages of his writing career, ranging from 1842--when he accepted Emerson's commission to review four volumes of botanical and zoological catalogues in an essay that was published in The Dial as "Natural History of Massachusetts"--to 1862, when he prepared "Wild Apples," a lecture he had delivered during the Concord Lyceum's 1859-1860 season, for publication in the Atlantic Monthly after his death. Three other early meditations on natural history and human nature, "A Winter Walk," "A Walk to Wachusett," and "The Landlord," were originally published in 1842 and 1843. Lively, light pieces, they reveal Thoreau's early use of themes and approaches that recur throughout his work. "A Yankee in Canada," a book-length account of an 1850 trip to Quebec that was published in part in 1853, is a fitting companion to Cape Cod and The Maine Woods, Thoreau's other long accounts of explorations of internal as well as external geography. In the last four essays, "The Succession of Forest Trees" (1860), "Autumnal Tints" (1862), "Walking" (1862), and "Wild Apples" (1862), Thoreau describes natural and philosophical phenomena with a breadth of view and generosity of tone that are characteristic of his mature writing. In their skillful use of precisely observed details to arrive at universal conclusions, these late essays exemplify Transcendental natural history at its best.

About this title

Book Description:

A choice collection of Thoreau’s ruminative nature writing on walking and the beauty of England, in his characteristically wide-ranging and philosophical style.

From the Back Cover:

'There was an excellent wisdom in him, proper to a rare class of men, which showed him the material world as a means and symbol... he had in a short life exhausted the capabilities of this world; wherever there is knowledge, wherever there is virtue, wherever there is beauty, he will find a home.' Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his Biographical Sketch A selection of ruminative nature writing on walking and the beauty of New England, here Thoreau's characteristically wide-ranging and philosophical style offers a multitude of fascinating observations. Excursions presents Thoreau's most studied and expansive collection of writing on the natural world. An early advocate of conservationism, he discusses here, in mesmerising prose, the complex but essential relationship between man and nature. This edition includes a remarkable Biographical Sketch by Thoreau's great contemporary and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson. This choice collection of Thoreau's nature writing includes the essays 'The Succession of Forest Trees', 'Walking', and 'Autumnal Tints' - each one an explorative reach into the heart of the natural world. Thoreau's travels through the woods of New England are not only physical journeys through some of the most awe-inspiring landscapes in America but also spiritual excursions of the mind. Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was an American author, naturalist, transcendentalist, tax resister, development critic, and philosopher. His many publications include such classics as Walden and Civil Disobedience. Jeffrey S. Cramer is Editor of Walden: A Fully Annotated Edition and I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau, both published by Yale University Press.

About this edition

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0691064504
• ISBN 13: 9780691064505
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 672
• Editor: Moldenhauer Joseph J.