WALDEN AND OTHER WRITINGS. Edited With A Biographical Introduction By Brooks Atkinson. Foreword By Townsend Scutter.

Thoreau, Henry David

ISBN 10: 0394604210 / ISBN 13: 9780394604213

Published by NY. 1965. Modern Library, 1977

About this Item

brown shiny faux leather "leatherette" hardcover 8vo. (octavo). dustwrapper in protective plastic book jacket cover. fine cond. like new. binding square & tight. covers clean. edges clean. contents free of markings. dustwrapper in fine cond. not worn or torn or price clipped. nice clean copy. no library markings, store stamps, stickers, bookplates, no names, inking, underlining, remainder markings etc~. printing # not given. xxiv+732p. american literature. memoirs. autobiography. philosophy. politics. civil disobedience. a plea for captain john brown. slavery in massachusetts. a week on the concord. ~ Henry David Thoreau's vision of personal freedom~ the concept that moral law and the dictates of the individual conscience are superior to civil law ~and governmental statutes~ has become part of the American heritage, particularly pertinent to our own times. Thoreau spent his life listening to "a different drummer," and in following his belief that the individual could lead a life of simplicity and independence apart from social organization and material civilization, he anticipated one of the major themes of contemporary America. His writings communicate his thoughts and offer us his personal vision of life as well as its transformation into a practical working philosophy on which he based his life style. This volume contains the full text of Walden as well as the essays Civil Disobedience, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea For Captain John Brown, Life Without Principle, and many of the famous nature studies. The editor, Brooks Atkinson has coontributed a penetrating critical and biographical introduction.

Seller Inventory # 10202502

Bibliographic Details

• Title: WALDEN AND OTHER WRITINGS. Edited With A Biographical Introduction By Brooks Atkinson. Foreword By Townsend Scutter.
• Publisher: NY. 1965. Modern Library
• Publication Date: 1977
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0394604210
• ISBN 13: 9780394604213
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included
• Seller catalogs:
  • american civil war
  • american literature
  • philosophy

About this title

Synopsis

With their call for "simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!”, for self-honesty, and for harmony with nature, the writings of Henry David Thoreau are perhaps the most influential philosophical works in all American literature.

The selections in this volume represent Thoreau at his best. Included in their entirety are Walden, his indisputable masterpiece, and his two great arguments for nonconformity, Civil Disobedience and Life Without Principle. A lifetime of brilliant observation of nature--and of himself--is recorded in selections from A Week On The Concord And Merrimack Rivers, Cape Cod, The Maine Woods and The Journal.

About the Author

Henry David Thoreau was born July 12, 1817 - "just in the nick of time," as he wrote, for the "flowering of New England," when the area boasted such eminent citizens as Emerson, Hawthorne, Whitman and Melville. Raised in genteel poverty - his father made and sold pencils from their home - Thoreau enjoyed, nevertheless, a fine education, graduating from Harvard in 1837. In that year, the young thinker met Emerson and formed the close friendship that became the most significant of his life. Guided, sponsored and aided by his famous older colleague, Thoreau began to publish essays in The Dial, exhibiting the radical originality that would gain the disdain of his contemporaries but the great admiration of all succeeding generations.

In 1845, Thoreau began the living experiment for which he is most famous. During his two years and two months in the shack beside the New England pond, he wrote his first important work, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849), was arrested for refusing to pay his poll tax to a government that supported slavery (recorded in "Civil Disobedience") and gathered the material for his masterpiece, Walden (1854). He spent the rest of his life writing and lecturing and died, relatively unappreciated, in 1862.


From the Paperback edition.