Henry David Thoreau : A Week on the Concord and Merrimack

Henry David Thoreau : A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers / Walden; Or, Life in the Woods / The Maine Woods / Cape Cod (Library of America)

This Library of America edition collects for the first time in one volume the four full-length works in which Henry David Thoreau combined his poetic sensibility, classical learning, philosophical austerity, and Yankee love of practical detail into literary masterpieces on humanityâ€™s communion with nature.

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack RiversÂ is based on a boat trip Thoreau took with his brother in 1839 from Concord, Massachusetts, to Concord, New Hampshire. Ten years in the writing (it was the book he retired to Walden to work on) and incorporating essays, passages from his journal, and some of his best poems, it is a superbly crafted achievement, its texture enriched by the idealism of the Transcendentalists, the delighted wordplay of an imaginative linguist, the individualism of a young America, and the earthiness of a lover of nature.

WaldenÂ is a personal declaration of independence, a social experiment, and a voyage of spiritual discovery, set within the seasonal cycle of a yearâ€™s â€œLife in the Woods.â€ â€œSimplify, simplifyâ€ is the beat of its â€œmore distant drummerâ€â€”to abandon waste and illusion, to get to the bottom of lifeâ€™s essential needs, and to practice a new economy for humane living. Its witty and pointed rhetoric brings together language and nature, the human and nonhuman in unusual conjunctions that resonate with symbolic meanings. A manual of self-reliance as well as a masterpiece of style, it is one of the most fervently loved classics of American literature.

The Maine WoodsÂ is an account of three trips taken by boat and canoe in 1846, 1853, and 1857 through an unexplored interior bypassed by westward expansion. It describes the virgin rivers and forests of Maine, the customs of woodsmen and Indian guides, the hunting of moose, and the effects of the timber industry and encroaching settlement. An early and eloquent plea for conservation by a farsighted naturalist, its close observation of the American wild becomes an examination of â€œthe motives which carry men into the wilderness.â€

Cape CodÂ is the bleakest of Thoreauâ€™s works, resembling Melvilleâ€™s prose in its vision of the titanic indifference of nature. Cape Cod appears as both ocean and desert, a vast expanse of shipwrecks and barren soil, peopled by hardy, weathered inhabitants who seem survivors from the age of the first Pilgrims. Based upon his own visits and upon accounts from the earliest times, it is an unsentimental study of human endurance in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay.

LIBRARY OF AMERICAÂ is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nationâ€™s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, Americaâ€™s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
Country USA
Brand Library of America
Manufacturer Library of America
Binding Hardcover
ItemPartNumber 9780940450271
Color Black
ReleaseDate 1989-09-15
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780940450271

Country	USA
Brand	Library of America
Manufacturer	Library of America
Binding	Hardcover
ItemPartNumber	9780940450271
Color	Black
ReleaseDate	1989-09-15
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780940450271

Henry David Thoreau : A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers / Walden; Or, Life in the Woods / The Maine Woods / Cape Cod (Library of America)

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