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First edition of the author's first book, second issue, one of 706 copies returned to Thoreau after publication in 1849 due to slow sales, reissued with a cancel title page in 1862 by Ticknor and Fields. Thoreau quipped of the episode, "I have now a library of nearly 900 volumes, over 700 of which I wrote myself". Thoreau first established a literary reputation through the newspapers under the mentorship of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Aided by Emerson, Thoreau sent his first book to publishers, but none were interested unless he covered the costs himself. He eventually persuaded James Munroe and Company to print 1,000 copies on this basis. Of these, 75 copies were given away, 219 sold, and the remaining 706 sent back to the author via wagon on 28 October 1853. This prompted the journal entry: "The wares are sent to me at last [and] are something more substantial than fame, as my back knows, which has borne them up two flights of stairs. Is it not well that the author should behold the fruits of his labour? My works are piled up on one side of my chamber half as high as my head, my opera omnia. This is authorship" (Allen, p. 3). The book recounts Thoreau's 1839 trip with his brother John. After John's sudden death at age 27, Thoreau planned the work as a tribute to him. "As A Week grew in range and depth, so did Thoreau's understanding of the ways the Industrial Revolution was already, in less than a decade, rewriting the New England landscape, as the ribbons of railroad displaced commerce from the rivers of yore. Into A Week, this intensely personal and private work of his Walden days, Thoreau poured all the best of his younger self, all the passion and poetry of three decades" (Walls, p. 196). Thoreau further developed these themes in his famous second book, Walden (1854). Though under-appreciated during his lifetime, his posthumous reputation has placed him among the major American writers and conservationists. Allen, pp. 1-4; BAL 20104 (binding variant D, no priority); Borst A1.1.a.2 (binding variant 2, no priority); Howes T226. Laura Dassow Walls, Henry David Thoreau: A Life, 2017. Duodecimo. Bound with final advert leaf for Walden (1854). Original purple wavy-grain cloth, spine lettered in gilt, covers stamped in blind with border and central quatrefoil enclosing a maltese cross, buff endpapers. Spine sunned, spots of discolouration to covers, intermittent light foxing but generally clean. A very good, attractive copy.
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