Lot Details
Lot 242
THOREAU, HENRY DAVID A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.
Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1862. First edition, second issue with the reissued 1862 title page and sheets from the 1849 edition. Publisher's cloth, the covers stamped in blind, the spine lettered in gilt, brown coated endpapers. 7 3/4 x 4 1/2 inches; 413 pp., leaf advertising Walden at end. Fade to cloth spine and a gouge to the lower joint near foot, a few bumps and areas of light rubbing to the cloth, the title page lightly toned and with faint offset from the ink inscription on the verso of the front free endpaper, the Frederick Woodward Skiff copy with his bookplate and pencil notes, the ink inscription presenting the book to him in 1935.
In one of the most famous episodes in American publishing history, in 1849 Henry David Thoreau had 1000 sets of sheets of his first book A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers printed at his own expense. The book hardly sold and in 1853 the remaining 706 copies were sent back to Thoreau, where they sat in his attic bedroom for the next nine years until Thoreau's reputation as a writer was more established. In 1862, Ticknor and Fields bought 145 bound copies and 450 unbound copies directly from Thoreau, inserted a new title but retained the leaf advertising Walden even though it had been in published eight years earlier. This copy has a later newspaper printing laid-in with an illustration depicting Thoreau expanding his library and with his famous quote "I have now a library of nearly 900 volumes, over 700 of which I wrote myself!"
BAL 20104
C
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