Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Thoreau Henry David. THE WRITINGS. Boston Houghton Mifflin and Co. 1906, 1906.
Price: US$1375.00 + shipping
Description: 20 volumes. Manuscript edition, signed by the publisher. Tall 8vo, full green buckram, spines with lettering labels as called for. A nice reading set of this highly important edition. This copy without manuscript.
Seller: Buddenbrooks, Inc., Newburyport, MA, U.S.A.
Thoreau, Henry David. The writings of Henry David Thoreau. Houghton, Mifflin & Co, Boston, 1906.
Price: US$9375.00 + shipping
Description: Manuscript Edition, limited to 600 sets (this is no. 387), signed by the publishers, containing a leaf of Thoreau's manuscript, written in ink on both sides; the entire text concerns apples, portions of which appeared in his essay, "Wild Apples." 20 volumes, 8vo, portraits and numerous plates throughout after photographs by Herbert Gleason. In original green buckram, paper labels on spines; lacking the rare printed dust-jackets, with the buckram cracked along 2 or 3 joints, some chipping at the tops of 5 or 6 spines, 1 label slightly abraded, a few leaves in volume 11 carelessly opened, spines uniformly sunned, occasional light pencil annotation in the Journals; but on the whole, the set looks pretty presentable as it sits on the shelf, and the leaf of manuscript with a neat and imperceptible reinforcement at the fold, otherwise fine. Allen, p. 52; BAL 20145; Borst B3. BAL notes that vols. I-V are reprints, but vols. VI-XX contain material not published before, and represent the first complete edition of the Journals.
Seller: Rulon-Miller Books (ABAA / ILAB), St. Paul, MN, U.S.A.
THOREAU, HENRY DAVID. The Writings of Henry David Thoreau. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1906.
Price: US$15000.00 + shipping
Condition: Near Fine
Description: Twenty (20) volumes in half green morocco over mottled boards with matching endpapers. Spines with pleasing floral gilt decoration. Top edges gilt. Edition limited to 600 copies only, each with a page in the first volume ( written both sides) from Thoreau's journal in his own hand. The subject of these pages seems to be the Moon and Aurora Borealis.Also signed by publisher. This is copy #94. Each volume has colour frontis and gravure as well as additional gravures from photos in the text. Leather has faded to brown on spines but not unattractively. Edgewear to extremities but o/w a near fine set and rare thus. Size: 8vo - over 7¾ - 9¾" tall
Seller: Contact Editions, ABAC, ILAB, Toronto, ON, Canada
Price: US$18500.00 + shipping
Description: The manuscript edition of the writings of Henry David Thoreau. With the original manuscript sheet by Thoreau from his journal tipped-in to volume 1. The two page manuscript fragment comprises 58 lines from "Autumnal Tints," in altered form, published in the Atlantic Monthly, October 1862, and collected in Excursions the following year. The fragment concludes with the line containing the title phrase: "When you come to observe faithfully the changes of each humblest plant, you find that each has sooner or later its peculiar autumnal tint, or tints [.]." Octavo, 20 volumes. Bound in the publisher's three-quarter green morocco over marbled boards, spine elaborately tooled and lettered in gilt in compartments, raised bands, top edge gilt, marbled endpapers. Signed by the publisher. Illustrated in each volume with a photograph of flowers and a hand-colored scenes used as frontispieces and additional plates inserted throughout. In fine condition without wear. Henry David Thoreau was an American essayist, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, and historian. A leading transcendentalist, Thoreau is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay "Civil Disobedience" (originally published as "Resistance to Civil Government"), an argument for disobedience to an unjust state. Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry amount to more than 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions are his writings on natural history and philosophy, in which he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern-day environmentalism. His literary style interweaves close observation of nature, personal experience, pointed rhetoric, symbolic meanings, and historical lore, while displaying a poetic sensibility, philosophical austerity, and Yankee attention to practical detail. He was also deeply interested in the idea of survival in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay; at the same time he advocated abandoning waste and illusion in order to discover life's true essential needs. He was a lifelong abolitionist, delivering lectures that attacked the Fugitive Slave Law while praising the writings of Wendell Phillips and defending the abolitionist John Brown. Thoreau's philosophy of civil disobedience later influenced the political thoughts and actions of such notable figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr.
Seller: Raptis Rare Books, Palm Beach, FL, U.S.A.
Price: US$18750.00 + shipping
Description: Large octavo (6" x 8-3/4"), 20 volumes, the first volume in publisher's 3/4 green morocco leather with gilt-lettered and decorated spine, the remaining 19 volumes in 3/4 green morocco leather with different gilt-lettered and decorated spines. Each volume illustrated with a frontispiece in two states, one hand-colored, as well as additional gravures after photographs by Herbert Gleason. The first volume is copy #119 of 600 numbered sets SIGNED by the publisher; the remaining 19 volumes are from set 561. The first volume with an inlaid leaf of Thoreau's original holograph manuscript written on both sides of the sheet. The two-page manuscript fragment, detached and laid in loosely, comprises 55 lines, from Chapter 2 of CAPE COD, "Stage-coach Views" (first published in June of 1855 in PUTNAM'S MONTHLY, Vol. V, No. xxx, pages 637640), in altered form with extensive pencil annotations and corrections. In part: "For the first half of the Cape large blocks of stone are found, here and there, mixed with the sand, but for the last thirty miles 'it is rare to meet with boulders or even gravel.' Hitchcock conjectures that the ocean has in course of time eaten out Boston Harbor and other bays in the mainland, and that the minute fragments have been deposited by currents at a distance from the shore, and formed this sand bank which we call Cape Cod. That is Hitchcock's account of it. For the most part above the sand, if the surface is subjected to chemical or even in some places to agricultural tests, there is found to be a thin layer of soil gradually diminishing from Barnstable to Truro, where it ceases; but there are many holes and rents in this weather-beaten garment not likely to be stitched in time, which reveal the naked flesh of the Cape, and its extremity is completely bare." Thoreau manuscript material is increasingly scarce and more expensive to obtain, nearly always found as it is here, bound into the Manuscript Edition. BAL 20145: This edition marks the first printing of Thoreau's entire Journal. Manuscript leaf detached and laid in loosely. Spines of 19 volumes evenly sunned to a light tan; very minor wear. Near Fine
Seller: Charles Agvent, est. 1987, ABAA, ILAB, Fleetwood, PA, U.S.A.
Price: US$19500.00 + shipping
Condition: Fine
Description: The Works of Henry David Thoreau Manuscript Edition Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1906 Set No. 110 of 600 20 volumes. Near fine condition. Contains a tipped in, double-sided page from Thoreau's Journal with draft sections from his later famed essay, "Life Without Principle". Signed by Publisher Houghton Mifflin. Three quarter leather with marbled cloth covers. Except for Volumes XIV - XX, spines are slightly sunfaded but remain crisp, clean and brightly readable. Volumes XIV - XX appear to have been in a less sun-exposed spot as their spines retain original leather darkness. This is a matched set, all from Set 110. Manuscript Transcription: It is the stalest repetition [referring to the news of the day]. These facts appear to float in the atmosphere, insignificant as the sporules of fungi & impinge on some neglected thallus or surface of my mind which affords a basis for them- & hence a parasitic growth. We should wash ourselves clean of such news. Methinks I should hear with indifference if a trustworthy messenger were to inform me that the sun drowned himself last night. [Journal entry for 7 March 1862, slightly amended. Vol. VIII, page 341.] It is commonly said that history is history of war, but it is at the same time a history of development. Savage nations- any of our Indian tribes, for instance- would have enough stirring incidents in their annals, wars and murders enough, surely, to make interesting anecdotes without end, such a chronicle of startling and monstrous events as fill the daily papers and suit the appetite of barrooms; but the annals of such a tribe do not furnish the materials for history. [ Journals entry for 29 July, 1852. Vol. X, page 267.] The last 2 weekly papers I have not looked at. I have no time to read newspapers. If you chance to live & move & have your being in that thin stratum in which the events which make the news transpire, - thinner than the paper on which it is printed- then these things will fill the world for you; but if you soar above or dive below that plain, you cannot remember nor be reminded of them. [Journal entry for 3 April 1853, slightly amended. Volume XI, page 87.] C. says If you have been to the P.O. once you are damned. But I answer that it depends somewhat on whether you get a letter or not. If you do not get a letter there is some hope for you. [Journal entry for 22 April 1862, slightly amended. Volume IX, page 456.] More photos available on request.
Seller: Barrow Bookstore, Concord, MA, U.S.A.
THOREAU Henry David. Writings. , 1906.
Price: US$37500.00 + shipping
Description: "THOREAU, Henry David. The Writings. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1906. Twenty volumes. Octavo, original three-quarter brown crushed morocco, raised bands, gilt-decorated spines, top edges gilt, uncut. $37,500.Manuscript Edition, beautifully bound and illustrated, limited to 600 copies, with manuscript leaf from Walden (two sides) entirely in Thoreaus hand.Each set in this important limited edition includes a Thoreau manuscript leaf mounted and bound into the first volume. The leaf in this set is from the chapter entitled "Baker Farm" from Walden, Thoreau's masterwork. The leaf reads, in large part: "[If it had] lasted longer it might have tinged my employments and life. As I walked on the railroad causeway, I used to wonder at the halo of light around my shadow, and would fain fancy myself one of the elect. One who visited me declared that the shadows of some Irishmen before him had no halo about them, that it was only natives that were so distinguished " (See Volume II, p. 224). The verso of the leaf is from an earlier section of this chapter. It reads, again in part: [I know but one small] grove of sizable trees left in Concord, supposed to have been planted by the pigeons that were once baited with beechnuts near by; it is worth the while to see the silver grain sparkle when you split this wood; the bass; the hornbeam; the Celtis occidentalis, or false elm, of which we have but one well-grown; some taller mast of a pine, a shingle tree, or a more perfect hemlock than usual " (See Volume II, p. 224). "Thoreau's Walden occupies a special place in our American heritage. Moreover, the book is still alive and vibrant, and it reaches out to touch the life of each one of us who is receptive it has come to be thought a central document in the American experience " (Thorpe, Treasures of the Huntington Library). "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 celebrationfor 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, 100 Influential American Books 63). This beautiful set also contains a foldout map of Concord, reproductions of Thoreau's journal illustrations, and over 100 tissue-guarded illustrations, several beautifully hand-finished in color. Number 476 of 600 sets, signed by the publisher on the limitation page. Boswell & Crouch 1721. BAL 20145. Borst A20.1.a. Owner signature and stamp in each volume.Fine condition. A beautiful set, with exceptional and valuable manuscript leaf from Walden."
Seller: Bauman Rare Books, Philadelphia, PA, U.S.A.