Folio Society Published Works Number 2064
Thoreau, Henry - Walden Large Format Edition
We buy and sell items like these, so please contact us if you have similar items for sale, and we will make you an offer if we are interested.
To check if we have this item, or similar items, in stock, please click the Check Stock link below. Alternatively, use the links on the left to search our large online database of items for sale, or to visit the rest of the site.
Check Stock
Thoreau, Henry - Walden Large Format Edition (Published in by The Folio Society in 2009. Quarter-bound in leather with silk sides. Presented in a slipcase featuring one of Herbert W. Gleason's photographs of Walden Pond. Introduction by John Updike Endpapers printed with a map of Concord by Gleason. Set in Adobe Caslon. 304 pages; 20 duotone photographs, including 2 fold-outs. Silver top edge, ribbon marker. Book Size: 12 .5" x 8". In the spring of 1845, a 27-year old New Englander embarked on an experiment in simple living. Henry David Thoreau built a one-room cabin on the shore of Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts, and on July 4 of that year declared his own state of independence. He lived in this cabin for two years, immersing himself in the natural world around him, aiming 'to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life'. The product of this experiment is now considered one of the greatest works of prose in the English language. Published in 1854, Walde nis at once a profound examination of the power of the human spirit, and a work that has helped define America's very idea of itself as a nation. Thoreau was a lifelong abolitionist and in 1846, during his stay at Walden Pond, he famously refused to pay his town poll tax in protest at the government's protection of slavery. Thoreau's celebrated essay, Civil Disobedience, is cited by Martin Luther King as one of the profound influences on his life: 'Fascinated by the idea of refusing to cooperate with an evil system, I was so deeply moved that I reread the work several times.' Among the countless others – writers, thinkers, activists, leaders – inspired by Thoreau are Proust, Tolstoy, W. B. Yeats, Hemingway, John F. Kennedy and Mahatma Gandhi. Conservationist, naturalist and photographer Herbert W. Gleason was also inspired by Thoreau's writings. In 1899 he undertook to retrace the author's footsteps and photograph precisely what Thoreau had written about. Our edition includes photographs taken by Gleason in and around Walden Pond and Concord, presented alongside extracts from Thoreau's text. )
