A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

Thoreau, Henry David

ISBN 10: 0691063761 / ISBN 13: 9780691063768

Published by Princeton University Press, 1980

Seller Inventory # 134255

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.

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.

Bibliographic Details

Title: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Publication Date: 1980
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: New