A week on the Concord and Merrimack rivers ; Walden, or, Life in the woods ; the Maine woods ; Cape Cod

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Title:

A week on the Concord and Merrimack rivers ; Walden, or, Life in the woods ; the Maine woods ; Cape Cod

Author:

Thoreau, Henry David, 1817-1862.

ISBN:

9781989743751

Personal Author:

Thoreau, Henry David, 1817-1862.

Uniform Title:

Prose works. Selections

Physical Description:

322 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm

Series:

The Library of America ; 28

Contents:

A week on the Concord and Merrimack rivers ---- Walden; or, life in the woods ---- The Maine woods ---- Cape Cod.

Abstract:

"Henry David Thoreau wrote four full-length works, collected here in a single volume. 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" 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."-- (Source of summary not specified)

Subject Term:

Natural history -- New England.

Geographic Term:

Concord River (Mass.) -- Description and travel.

Merrimack River (N.H. and Mass.) -- Description and travel.

Added Author:

Sayre, Robert F.,

Added Title:

Walden.

Copies:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Item Barcode	Shelf Number	Copy	Status
Searching... 1:IIEMSA	1:GEN-BOOK	002300632	818 T449W 1990	1	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849) is a book by Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862).[1] It is ostensibly the narrative of a boat trip from Concord, Massachusetts to Concord, New Hampshire, and back, that Thoreau took with his brother John in 1839. John died of tetanus in 1842 and Thoreau wrote the book, in part, as a tribute to his memory.

The book's first draft was completed while Thoreau was living at Walden Pond (1845-47). He was unable to find a publisher, however, and therefore had it published at his own expense.[2] Few copies sold and he was left with several hundred extras and went into debt. A slightly revised version of A Week, based on corrections Thoreau had made himself, was published in 1868, six years after his death.

While the book may appear to be a travel journal, broken up into chapters for each day, this is deceptive. The actual trip took two weeks and while given passages are a literal description of the journey -- from Concord, Massachusetts, down the Concord River to the Middlesex Canal, to the Merrimack River, up to Concord, New Hampshire, and back -- much of the text is in the form of digressions by the Harvard-educated author on diverse topics such as religion, poetry, and history. Thoreau relates these topics to his own life experiences, often in the context of the rapid changes taking place in his native New England during the Industrial Revolution, changes that Thoreau often laments.