A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. (Writings of Henry D. Thoreau (Hardcover))

Thoreau, Henry David; Hovde, Carl F.; Howarth, William L.; Witherell, Elizabeth Hall

ISBN 10: 0691063761 / ISBN 13: 9780691063768

Published by Princeton University Press, 1980

About this Item

Hardback. Small 8vo. 1980. Very Good in Very Good dust jacket. Price clipped. Owner's name on front free endpaper and impress on title page. Text is clean and unmarked.

Seller Inventory # 013451

Bibliographic Details

• Title: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. (Writings of Henry D. Thoreau (Hardcover))
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication Date: 1980
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691063761
• ISBN 13: 9780691063768
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good

About this title

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.