8vo (180 x 108 mm). Original blind-stamped brown cloth (rebacked, a few minor repairs).

FIRST EDITION with map of Walden Pond and 8 pp. publisher's ads at rear. Equal parts social experiment, a treatise on self-discovery, and satire, Walden chronicles the two years, two months, and two days Thoreau spent living in a cabin he'd built near Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. Over a century and a half after its initial publication John Updike would write of the work, "Walden has become such a totem of...the civil disobedience mindset...that the book risks being as revered and unread as the Bible" (Updike, "A Sage for All Seasons," The Guardian, 25 June 2004). Borst A2.1.a; BAL 20106; Grolier, American, 63.