Book Description
Henry David Thoreau wrote four full-length works, collected here for the first time in a single volume. Subtly interweaving natural observation, personal experience, and historical lore, they reveal his brilliance not only as a writer, but as a naturalist, scholar, historian, poet, and philosopher. "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers" is based on a boat trip taken with his brother from Concord, Massachusetts to Concord, New Hampshire. "Walden," one of America's great books, is at once a personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, manual of self-reliance, and masterpiece of style. "The Maine Woods" and "Cape Cod" portray landscapes changing irreversibly even as he wrote. The first combines close observation of the unexplored Maine wilderness with a far-sighted plea for conservation; the second is a brilliant and unsentimental account of survival on a barren peninsula in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay.
Customer Reviews:
Influential writings whose beauty you will see differently at different stages in life.......2006-10-26
While every artist is tied to their time and place, this is especially true of Henry David Thoreau. To me, Thoreau has always seemed like a beautiful and tender plant that could only exist in a specific time and place. His world was rich enough to allow him to enjoy nature rather than see it as something to tame. Yet it was also rural enough to leave him natural space to enjoy as if it were wild.
It also seems to me that Thoreau's writing is more beautiful and observant than penetrating and intelligent. It is more about the senses than analysis. I think this is why it appeals so much to young people of so many generations and why he became such a symbol for the Back-to-Nature portion of the Boomer generation.
This volume contains his most influential works (the essays and poems are collected in a companion volume also from the wonderful Library of America): A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Walden; or, Life in the Woods, The Main Woods, and Cape Cod. So much has been written about these works that I can't think of anything specific to add except to encourage their being read. However, I would encourage adults who remember reading them in their youth with such enthusiasm to read them again from the vantage point of mid-life. I think they will find somewhat less to be enamored of in the content, but they will appreciate his sheer power of writing more.
The total collection is more than a 1,000 pages and includes a chronology of Thoreau's life, notes on the text, relevant maps of the areas covered in the book, more notes, and an index.
The Library of America's Thoreau.......2006-08-09
While reading the four books of Henry David Thoreau (1817 -- 1862) included in this volume, I was reminded of the piano sonata no. 2, the "Concord" sonata by the American composer Charles Ives (1874 -- 1954) and decided to listen to it again to complement my reading. The Concord is a monumental work in which Ives tried to capture the "spirit of transcendentalism" associated with Concord, Massachusetts. Its four large movements bear the names of Emerson, Hawthorne, Bronson Alcott, and Thoreau. The "Thoreau" movement of the Concord captured in music for me what I had been reading in Thoreau's texts, with its reflective arpeggios, long hymnlike introspective passages, distant sounds of bells, and quiet close. Ives wrote the movement, he said, to reveal the "vibration of the universal lyre" to which Thoreau had alluded in the chapter of Walden titled "Sounds". Those who love Thoreau or the American Transcendentalists should explore Ives's great musical tribute to them and their thought.
This volume is the first of two in the Library of America devoted to Thoreau, with the second book consisting of essays and poems. It includes the two books published during his lifetime, "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers" and "Walden" together with two books published shortly after his death, "The Maine Woods" and "Cape Cod". The former two books are philosophical and introspective in tone, even though they include much of the descriptive writing about nature for which Thoreau is famous. They are the writings of Thoreau the Transcendentalist, the Thoreau of Ives's Concord Sonata. The second two books are describes Thoreau's travels. They originated the American practice of writing about nature.
Thoreau's most famous book, "Walden" describes the two years he spent living at Walden Pond, near Concord, from 1845 -- 1847 on a tract owned by Emerson. Walden is deservedly an American classic, as Thoreau reflects upon and attempts to simplify his life, to appreciate it for itself and for the everyday, without the strains of commerce or the pursuit of wealth. It is an eloquent study of learning to be alone with and content with oneself.
Thoreau wrote the first draft of "Walden" while he resided there and also wrote "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers" which in 1849 became his first published book, enjoying little success at the time. This book describes a trip Thoreau took with his brother and there are many detailed observations of people, places, and plants and animals. But the book is full of detailed digressions on literature, philosophy, the Greek Classics, friendship, and Thoreau's religious beliefs. This book shows the large influence of Eastern thought on Thoreau. It is filled with allusions and quotations from poetry on virtually every page. It is a joy to read.
There is little overt philosophising in Thoreau's latter two books. But both these books made me want to leave, at least for a short time, my life in the city and to run and visit the wild places Thoreau described. In "The Maine Woods" Thoreau describes three trips he took to Nortwest Maine -- its forests, rivers, lakes, and mountains, in 1843, 1853, and 1857. It includes detailed descriptions of rugged camping, in the rain and sun, on water and on land. The higlight for me was Thoreau's discussion in the first essay of the book of his climb on Mount Ktaadn, with Thoreau's description replete with both actual description and ancient Greek and American Indian symbolism.
Thoreau's final book, "Cape Cod" describes three visits in 1849, 1850, and 1853 (A fourth, later visit to the Cape is not included in the book.) This is Thoreau's only book which features the ocean and the seashore. It describes a rugged place, but the tone is leisurely and humorous in many places as Thoreau takes his reader on a thirty-mile "ramble" over the Cape. Thoreau introduces a memorable character in his chapter "The Wellsfleet Oysterman" and draws a picture of a lighthouse, no longer standing, on the Cape, "The Highland Light." Reading this book made me want to walk the sands and dunes that Thoreau walked and described over 150 years ago.
As with all volumes in the LOA series, this volume is lightly annotated but includes a valuable chronology of Thoreau's life which helps in approaching the texts. Transcendentalism and naturalism both have played critical roles in the development of American thought and you will find them both here. And if you enjoy Thoreau, I encourage you again to approach Ives's masterpiece, the "Concord Sonata" and meet Thoreau realized in sound.
Robin Friedman
A Fine Collection of Great Works.......2006-04-19
Henry David Thoreau is one of America's greatest literary treasures, and this Library of America compilation of his four complete, full-length books is an excellent purchase for any Thoreau fan. It includes possibly Thoreau's most famous work, Walden, as well as lesser-known (but still immensely inspired and entertaining)works. I would highly recommend this purchase to any interested Thoreau reader, as I am yet to find a comparable compilation for nearly as good a deal as this.
I respect no one more than I do Henry David Thoreau.......2004-10-15
It was Thoreau who made me understand that writing had everything to do with one's sum total and worth as a human being, and everything to do with one's passion and sense of purpose in life. It was while reading from an anthology of his work that I first made contact with a superior being. I recognized a mind that I could be intimate with, a mind and soul of someone with whom I could spend endless hours and never cease to learn from.
Thoreau's style is cumbersome. He can be terribly dry, and his paragraphs run way too long. But who cares when passages ignite the page with brilliance, flame from the black and white of paper into the depths of one's being. 'Walden' has more profound and relevant quotes than any other book I've read. They're the purest gems to be found in the rough of a larger work. A work that I wouldn't dare to diminish, but forewarn the reader so that they have the patience and perseverance to continue.
I would like to mention a superb biography written on the life and mind of Thoreau, a biography that exceeds and exceeds in going deeper into the life and mind of this great and humane and very misunderstood man, it is called: 'Henry Thoreau -- A Life Of The Mind,' by Robert D. Richardson Jr. Mr. Richardson not only wrote a biography, he was on a mission, for he knew and believed in what his subject was about. As comprehensive, insightful and exhilerating as any biography can or should be.
The price and quality of this anthology can't be beat. Beautiful to read and beautiful to see on my book shelf. Buy it! Get to know this man of yesterday, today and tomorrow.
I would like to publicly thank Henry David Thoreau.......2004-03-31
I would like to publicly thank Henry David Thoreau for teaching me this:
"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." -Henry David Thoreau
Zev Saftlas, Author of Motivation That Works: How to Get Motivated and Stay Motivated
Product Description
3 Hardcovers by Henry David Thoreau in a Slipcase (Box) ; Walden , The Maine Woods , A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
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Thoreau's Fable of Inscribing
Frederick Garber
Manufacturer: Princeton Univ Pr
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0691068739 |
Book Description
Early in Thoreau's career, he became obsessed with the problem of getting to be at home in the world. This ambitious book relates that obsession to his way of fostering at-homeness: "inscribing" himself not only through words but through such occupations as the making of books, houses, and tracks in the woods. Frederick Garber reveals that a complex fable endemic in Thoreau and perceptible from his earliest major writings puts inscribing and the quest for at-homeness in terms of a search for a home of homes, a quest that Thoreau realized must be ultimately unsuccessful. Focusing on Thoreau's major works, particularly on A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Garber explores the rich intertextual dialogue arising from this fable and Thoreau's concerns about at-homeness and inscribing. Garber discloses Thoreau's conviction that human lives are radically open-ended, at least in terms of what we can know in the present. All our modes of inscribing are inadequate, even though we can glimpse the possibility of ultimate words and sentences saying all that ever needed to be said.
Book Description
Henry D. Thoreau's classic A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers is published now as a new paperback edition and includes an introduction by noted writer John McPhee. This work--unusual for its symbolism and structure, its criticism of Christian institutions, and its many-layered storytelling--was Thoreau's first published book.
In the late summer of 1839, Thoreau and his older 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, Thoreau began to prepare a memorial account of their excursion. He wrote two drafts of this story at Walden Pond, which he continued to revise and expand until 1849, when he arranged for its publication at his own expense. The book's heterodoxy and apparent formlessness troubled its contemporary audience. Modern readers, however, have come to see it as an appropriate predecessor to Walden, with Thoreau's story of a river journey depicting the early years of his spiritual and artistic growth.
Customer Reviews:
We're Talking Major Greatness Here.......2006-11-19
It is obscene that abridged versions of this book are for sale. "A Week..." is an artistic masterpiece. If it seems a bit dense right now, then put the book on your shelf for a few decades and hope that you, not the book, will improve over time.
A Week with Thoreau.......2006-07-18
In late August, 1839, Henery David Thoreau and his brother John took a two-week trip on the Concord and Merrimack rivers in a boat called the Musketaquid that they had built themselves. John Thoreau subsequently died of lockjaw in 1842, a death which greatly affected his brother. While living at Walden Pond from 1845-1847, Thoreau worked on the manuscript of what became "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers", and the book was first published, with little commercial success in 1849. A revised edition was published after Thoreau's death.
The book describes the Thoreau brothers' river journey on the Concord River from Concord west to Lowell, Massachusetts where it connects with the Merrimack River from Lowell north to Concord, New Hampshire. (The brothers spent one week on land exploring Concord, New Hampshire and its environs, and this is not described in the book.) At the time of the journey Lowell was already a manufacturing center where girls from New England farms lived in large barracks and worked long hours spinning cotton in factories powered by the Merrimack River.
I was familiar with Walden, but I didn't know this earlier book of Thoreau's. It is a wonderful read. The book is arranged in seven chapters, one for each day of the river journey, and Thoreau describes extensively the rivers and inlets, the land, the plants and animals, the weather, the locks and the people that they encountered on their journey. Thoreau here and elsewhere has a clear and detailed eye for nature.
But the more fascinating part of this book consists of its extended disgressions and discussions that are only suggested by the description of the brothers' journey. Thoreau uses the river trip as a jumping-off point for meditations on history, science, literature, education, philosophy, religion, and much else. There is information on the early settlements of Concord and Lowell and of New England, especially involving contact with the Indian tribes. Even with this, most of the book is internalized. On almost every page, Thoreau's text is interspersed with poetry, some of it his own, some by other writers. Thoreau discusses the ancient Greek writers, including Homer and the Greek lyricists, as well as writers including Shakespeare and Goethe. There are long meditations on subjects such as the nature of friendship. Thoreau discusses comparative religion and turns a critical eye on the Puritanical religion of New England. The book shows a great fascination with and knowledge of Eastern thought, which is striking for this time in America's history, particularly with the Bhagavad-Gita.
Near the end of the book, capturing the end of his trip, Thoreau assumes an oratorical tone and his work takes on a philosophical theme. Although the American philosophy of Transcendentalism is notoriously difficult to define, Thoreau here discusses a world beyond the world of our senses and of nature. He alludes to a world of the timeless and of mysticism, which encompasses all religion, and which the evidence of the senses only suggests to us. It is a difficult and inspiring vision, informed greatly by Eastern thought and by Thoreau's friendship with Emerson. The discussion forms a moving conclusion to the book.
With its learning, its love of poetry, its picture of early New England, and its spirituality, "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers" is one of the great American books. For readers who know Thoreau only, as I did, through "Walden" and "Civil Disobedience,", this book will be a revelation.
Robin Friedman
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- Meandering up and down the rivers
- A pre-_Walden_ that's best read *after*
- ...Thoreau's TRUE Testament...
- an invigorating book
- Two Rivers Run Through His Soul
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A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (Dover Thrift Editions)
Henry David Thoreau
Manufacturer: Dover Publications
ProductGroup: Book
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The Maine Woods (Penguin Nature Library)
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Cape Cod
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Walden; Or, Life in the Woods (Dover Thrift Editions)
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Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 (Prairie State Books)
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The Heart of Thoreau's Journals
ASIN: 0486419320 |
Book Description
Classic of American literature not only vividly narrates a boat trip Thoreau took with his brother in 1839 but also contains thought-provoking observations on literature, philosophy, Native American and Puritan histories of New England, friends, and a diversity of other topics. "A book of wonderful merit." — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Customer Reviews:
Meandering up and down the rivers.......2006-07-18
This book is a record of a trip that Thoreau took with his brother, John, on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers in 1839. Although it certainly contains commentary about what the two brothers saw and did during the trip, this is hardly a travelogue. The book was written not immediately after the journey, but 7 years later, following the death of John. Indeed, it was written while Thoreau was living in his cabin on Walden Pond, as a kind of memorial. But even as a memorial, it's a bit odd, in that Thoreau is extremely careful to keep John's identity anonymous throughout the book.
The brothers took their leave of Concord one Saturday afternoon in 1839, in a small rowboat. They rowed down the Concord River to Lowell, then turned up the Merrimack, where they commenced to row up river as far as Hookset. Upon reaching Hookset, they visited for a week (a week whose events are not discussed in this book), then turned around and retraced their route to Concord. Thoreau provides a detailed account of how they spent their days. However, since much of the days were spent rowing, they had plenty of time for silent contemplation, so much of Thoreau's material presented here are the thoughts that came into his head as they rowed. The topics covered were quite varied, ranging from fishes, literature, poetry, the Bhagavad Gita, philosophy of history, King Philip's War, climbing expeditions in the Berkshires, New Hampshire geography and history, morality, natural philosophy, Goethe, and Chaucer. There are also extensive essays on friendship and religion.
This is the most explicitly philosophical of Thoreau's books. Nevertheless, naturalists and those interested in local New Hampshire history will also find material of interest. I found Thoreau's excursis on his personal religious beliefs (which he presents as a quasi-Sunday sermon) to be highly engaging.
A pre-_Walden_ that's best read *after*.......2002-09-15
Thoreau sought the seclusion of the pond to write *this* book, not _Walden_. In 19th-century terms, this treatise is a modified travelogue based on a 13-day boat trip that Henry and his brother John took in 1839. By today's standards, contemporary editors and many an English teacher would decorate this manuscript with red ink and admonish the author that he strays too often and too far from the main subject. Bill Bryson's essays wander too, but he doesn't usually reach back and quote the Bhagavad-Gita, Homer, Chaucer, or Shakespeare. But whenever Henry takes in his surroundings, he is reminded of something else, and before you know it a serious discourse is off and running, and it has nothing to do with floating upstream or down. He expresses his opinions or offers his knowledge about fish, mythology, religion, poetry, reading, writing, history, government, traveling, waterfalls, friendship, love, life, nature, art, dreams, and science. He reminisces about a previous trip to the Berkshires and a sail down the Connecticut River. He breaks into poetry at whim -- sometimes his own words, more often someone else's. Along the way, the brothers paddle from Concord, Massachusetts, to the area around Concord, New Hampshire, and then turn around and go home. We meet some of the people they encounter along the way and get a glimpse of New England life during that time period. In some respects, the people and the land haven't changed much at all. We can see Thoreau's environmentalism when he talks about dams and their effects on the habits and habitats of fish -- concerns that are still with us today. We can laugh at his puns and enjoy his wordplay (i.e., "The shallowest still water is unfathomable" and Man needs "not only to be spiritualized, but *naturalized*, on the soil of earth.") Above all, we can explore these rivers and shorelines during a time period that we will never see personally, with the aid of a native naturalist who's in the habit of sharing his observations and thoughts.
Read _Walden_ first. And if you find you enjoy Henry's take on nature and civilization and life and living, pick up _A Week_. There are a few gems lurking in here that you might connect with.
...Thoreau's TRUE Testament..........2001-09-20
[From Boating on the Catawba...in the
"Musketaquid"]
I will take the definite role of the
Nay-Sayer in the long line of aficianados
and idolators who insist that *Walden* is
Henry David Thoreau's masterpiece...
I will simply state that this work and
"Life Without Principle" are his great
contributions to literature, thought, and
value...
Take this quote from "Life Without Principle"
(before I get to 'A Week...'):
"To speak impartially, the best men that
I know are not serene, a world in themselves.
For the most part, they dwell in forms, and
flatter and study effect only more finely
than the rest. We select granite for the
underpinning of our houses and barns; we
build fences of stone; but we do not ourselves
rest on an underpinning of granite.
we do not teach one another the lessons of
honesty and sincerity that the brutes do, or
of steadiness and solidity that the rocks
do. The fault is commonly mutual, however;
for we do not habitually demand any more of
each other."
If that is not "preaching," but in the
sense of a prophet, not a mere sermonizer,
then there hasn't been any in a long time.
But Father Mapple's sermon in 'Moby-Dick' is
right up there with it.
If I had only known of Thoreau [and I had
not read much of him (and little then)except
at the University] and had to believe that
Thoreau was just what he seems to be in
'Walden,' then I would have given the man
short shrift...because there is not enough
of any sort of heart or soul in that work
to believe that he is even human. But
fortunately, a Thoreau worshipper (or rather,
*Walden* worshipper) forced me, by his own
imperious egotism, to try to understand this
man Thoreau and his views. It is fortunate
that I did, for I discovered 'A Week....'
This Penguin Classics edition is excellent
in a number of ways -- the two most important
being the notes in the back which explain the
allusions, and ancient Latin and Greek sources
and excerpts(for those who might not know them)
which Thoreau quotes and sometimes translates;
and the incredible "Introduction" by the editor,
H. Daniel Peck.
He can say his wondrous words himself:
"There is good reason for 'A Week's open
acknowledgment of the attritions of time
and loss. Conceived initially as a travel
book, 'A Week' was immeasurably deepened into
an elegiac account of experience by a tragic
event that occurrred in Thoreau's life in
the period following the 1839 voyage. In
1842, Thoreau's companion on that voyage,
his brother John, died suddenly, and in
agonizing pain, from lockjaw.
Without question this was the greatest loss
that Thoreau ever was to suffer. (He seems
to have undergone, in the aftermath of his
brother's death, a sympathetic case of the
illness that caused John's death, and the few
entries that appear in his journal in this
period are desperately mournful.) Interestingly,
though the pronoun 'we' characterizes the
narrator often in the book, the brother's
name is never mentioned -- an indication perhaps
of Thoreau's enduring need to distance himself
from this loss. there is nothing in 'A Week'
that directly refers to the death of John Thoreau.
Instead, his memory is evoked through various
symbolic strategies. For example, the long
digression on friendship in the chaper
'Wednesday' surely is intended to reflect the
intimacy Thoreau shared with his brother. Even
the ubiquitious 'we' of the narrator's voice
speaks to this intimacy. So intertwined are
the two brothers' identities in this pronoun
that it is often difficult to tell whether a
given action has been taken by Henry or John,
or both at once."
"To emphasize the elegiac aspects of 'A Week'
is to remind ourselves that throughout Western
history, rivers -- and voyages upon them --
have served as metaphors of transience and
mortality. Yet, as I indicated earlier,
'A Week' is not solely a mournful book. Its
rivers also support a spiritual buoyancy, and
provide the setting for exploration and adventure.
Most important, however, the book's larger
structure enables it to 'transcend and redeem'
the individual losses that it recounts."
[wonderful writing here!]
"In general, the outward-bound voyage of 'A Week'
dramatizes the writer's encounter with time and
its losses; on that voyage, he pays close
attention to the shore -- which, in its discreet
scenes of spoliation and historical change,
symbolizes the passage of time. The homeward
voyage, on the other hand, suggests assimilation,
resolution, and renewal. If the primary mode of
perception on the outward voyage had been
observation (of the shore), then the primary
mode of the return voyage is contemplation.
Now we are involved in an inward exploration,
and, symbolically, our vision leaves the shore
and returns to the river and the flow of
consciousness that it represents."
-- H. Daniel Peck; "Introduction."
an invigorating book.......2001-05-16
Lately, I've come to really like the writings of Thoreau. It has taken me several years to return to this author...after being forced to read excerpts from Thoreau at a ridiculously fast pace during high school. Little time to read and less time for reflection left a bad impression of Thoreau in my mind that has, as I said, only recently been overcome.
But now, upon my return, I have found "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers" by Henry David Thoreau to be a very invigorating book...one to be savored and not read too quickly. Taken at a good pace, it has been a joy.
While transcendentalism still strikes me as a rather facile and egotistical philosophy, I have really come to see and appreciate the mystical quality in Thoreau's works. Like most mystical authors, Thoreau is not always engrossing--he is actually rather tedious in points, but his work is punctuated by passages of sheer brilliance.
Seeing nature through Henry's eyes has been a wake up call to me personally. This book breathes excitement and lust for life upon the reader. Even his long winded discussions of different kinds of fish serve to alert me to my own lack of wonder. This world, even in its current subjection to futility , is still a wonderful creation. Nature (and Thoreau's picture of these rivers especially) echo the declaration of the Psalmist: "The heavens are telling of the glory of God; And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands" (Psalm 19:1).
I highly recommend this wonderful book.
Two Rivers Run Through His Soul.......2001-01-27
This book, written in Thoreau's younger years, conveys the exact opposite impression that The Maine Woods, which I reviewed here, does. In The Maine Woods, Thoreau has lost almost all his mystical and poetic instinct. He is, if I may put it this way, a mere Naturalist (albeit a good one). This book, even more than Walden, conveys Thoreau's youthful exuberance and intimations of another world. The only thing I can compare its finest passages to is Proust. Particularly on music, "It teaches us again and and again to trust the remotest and finest as the divinest instinct, and makes a dream our only real eaxperience." Compare this to Proust's speculation that music consists of the inhabitants of a diviner world and points us to immortality. Thoreau, again, says, "These things imply, perchance, that we live on the verge of another and purer realm, from which these odors and sounds are wafted over to us."-Moreover, the book is fun and Thoreau is still full of impish mischief, as exemplified when a man asks him if he is a PROTESTANT, and Thoreau, after thinking over the true meaning of the word, assures him that he is!-This is a fun and, moreover, ethereal book which all Walden lovers must read.-I'm not sure what happened to Thoreau in his later years, when he wrote in his journal, "This is the vilest world I've ever lived in."-But never mind this later melancholy for now, take a romp down a couple rivers and enthuse yourselves with calls from another, "purer" world!
Product Description
This is a very attractive four volume set, with a leaf motif in common on all volumes, each with different colors and leaf types; the Civil Disobedience volume is slightly different in format (the leaf design is just around the edges). Civil Disobedience is illustrated with a few decorative drawings by Felicia Telsey; the other three volumes are illustrated with b&w photographs by Clifton Johnson; cover design by Monica Elias; leaf decorations on the covers done by Christopher Russell. The books are just over 8 inches tall; this was issued in a slipcase.
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The Concord and the Merrimack;: Excerpts from A week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
Henry David Thoreau
Manufacturer: Little, Brown
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: B0007DTG6O |
Books:
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- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
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