Walden: Or Life in the Woods (First Folio Society Edition)
THOREAU, Henry David (intro. Jonathan Bate; engravings Simon Brett). Walden; or, Life in the Woods. London: The Folio Society, 2009.
Large 8vo. Quarter grey Morocco and green silk boards. Spine lettered in silver. Endpapers printed with map of Walden Pond. Illustrated slipcase. xxii, 282 pp., with wood engravings by Simon Brett throughout. First Folio Society edition.
Henry David Thoreau built a small timber cabin on the shore of Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts, in the spring of 1845, and lived there for two years, two months, and two days. Walden, published in 1854, is the account he made of that experiment — though to call it simply an account is to diminish it considerably. It is one of the founding texts of American literature and of modern environmentalism, a sustained meditation on simplicity, deliberateness, and the relationship between the individual conscience and the demands of a commercial society that was, even in 1854, already beginning to feel frantic. Its central proposition is that most of what passes for necessity is in fact convention, and that the examined life requires stripping convention away. Such a proposition has lost none of its force, and each generation has found in it a different set of urgencies to respond to.
Thoreau was not a hermit. He walked into Concord regularly, visited his family, received visitors, and was deeply embedded in the intellectual life of his circle, which included Emerson, whose land the cabin stood on. What he was attempting at Walden was something more precise: an experiment in conscious living, conducted with the rigour of a scientist and the attentiveness of a poet. The chapters move from the economics of building his cabin to the natural history of the pond in winter, from the sounds of the railway to the solitude of snow, from beans to higher laws, from sounds to silence. The prose is dense with observation, wit, and argument in roughly equal measure; there is more comedy in Walden than is commonly remembered, and more fury.
The introduction by Jonathan Bate situates the book within the tradition of writing about wildness and the human relationship to the natural world. Simon Brett's wood engravings, distributed throughout the text, work in a tradition of English illustration that suits the contemplative quality of the writing without sentimentalising it.
Fine in near fine slipcase. Slipcase shows very minor shelf wear.
This book is currently on display in the rare book section of our Bondi store. If you would like more information or to arrange a viewing, please contact: [email protected]
Catalogue Number: HH000305
Description
THOREAU, Henry David (intro. Jonathan Bate; engravings Simon Brett). Walden; or, Life in the Woods. London: The Folio Society, 2009.
Large 8vo. Quarter grey Morocco and green silk boards. Spine lettered in silver. Endpapers printed with map of Walden Pond. Illustrated slipcase. xxii, 282 pp., with wood engravings by Simon Brett throughout. First Folio Society edition.
Henry David Thoreau built a small timber cabin on the shore of Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts, in the spring of 1845, and lived there for two years, two months, and two days. Walden, published in 1854, is the account he made of that experiment — though to call it simply an account is to diminish it considerably. It is one of the founding texts of American literature and of modern environmentalism, a sustained meditation on simplicity, deliberateness, and the relationship between the individual conscience and the demands of a commercial society that was, even in 1854, already beginning to feel frantic. Its central proposition is that most of what passes for necessity is in fact convention, and that the examined life requires stripping convention away. Such a proposition has lost none of its force, and each generation has found in it a different set of urgencies to respond to.
Thoreau was not a hermit. He walked into Concord regularly, visited his family, received visitors, and was deeply embedded in the intellectual life of his circle, which included Emerson, whose land the cabin stood on. What he was attempting at Walden was something more precise: an experiment in conscious living, conducted with the rigour of a scientist and the attentiveness of a poet. The chapters move from the economics of building his cabin to the natural history of the pond in winter, from the sounds of the railway to the solitude of snow, from beans to higher laws, from sounds to silence. The prose is dense with observation, wit, and argument in roughly equal measure; there is more comedy in Walden than is commonly remembered, and more fury.
The introduction by Jonathan Bate situates the book within the tradition of writing about wildness and the human relationship to the natural world. Simon Brett's wood engravings, distributed throughout the text, work in a tradition of English illustration that suits the contemplative quality of the writing without sentimentalising it.
Fine in near fine slipcase. Slipcase shows very minor shelf wear.
This book is currently on display in the rare book section of our Bondi store. If you would like more information or to arrange a viewing, please contact: [email protected]
Catalogue Number: HH000305
