[Literature] Thoreau, Henry D. Walden; or, Life in the Woods

First Edition of Thoreau's Masterpiece, Walden

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1854. First edition (one of 2,000 copies printed). 8vo. 357, (6), 8 pp. (ads, dated April, 1854). Illustrated with a lithographic plan of Walden Pond, facing p. 307. Publisher's full brown cloth-covered boards, stamped in blind and in gilt, expertly recased; all edges trimmed; shallow tidemark throughout most of text; repaired closed tear in top edge and gutter of pp. 281-288; scattered creasing in top corners of text; occasional minor spotting; in brown cloth fall-down-back box. Borst A2.1.a; BAL 20106; Grolier, American 63

A handsome first edition of Thoreau's masterpiece. "Solid chunks of thought, in the midst of a solid chunk of nature, proving that the minimum of cash expenditure and of creature comfort may result in the maximum of acute observation and cerebration,--for almost a hundred years an inspiration to nature-lovers, to philosophers, to sociologists...and to persons who love to read the English language written with clarity" (Grolier, American 63).