WILD FRUITS: Thoreau's Rediscovered Lost Manuscript
by Henry Davd Thoreau (edited by Bradley P. Dean)
- Used
- near fine
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- Near Fine/Near Fine
- Seller
-
Morgantown, West Virginia, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
NF/NF. Hardcover with dust jacket in 'as new' condition ~~~ Illustrated end pages (map), introduction, related passages, a Thoreau chronology, glossary of botanical terms, a note on the provenance of the manuscript, manuscript facsimile, 90-odd pages of notes, works cited, index, 409 pages. ~~~ Thoreau's Walden (1854) is regarded both as a masterpiece of American prose and as a forerunner of modern environmentalism. Its author spent much of the 1850s learning what botany could teach him about the New England woods he chronicled. Thoreau brought that knowledge to bear on this sometimes very beautiful essay about plants, fruits and nuts, left incomplete at his death in 1862 and here printed for the first time. Thoreau's brief preface echoes the passions of Walden: "What are all the oranges imported into England to the hips and haws in her hedges?" The rest of the work is arranged fruit by fruit: we begin with elm-fruit ("most mistake the fruit before it falls for leaves, and we owe to it the first deepening of the shadows in our streets"), and proceed through several dozen entries to sassafras, skunk cabbage, strawberries, cranberries, juniper berries and, finally, "winter fruits." Though many plants' entries comprise just a few sentences, some offer plenty of room to meditate. Huckleberries prompt a 20-page essay, and pitch pine leads Thoreau to explain how "the restless pine seeds go dashing over [snow] like an Esquimaux sledge with an invisible team until, losing their wings or meeting with some insuperable obstacle, they lie down once for all, perchance to rise up pines." Though the book as a whole reads like the rough draft it is, plenty of individual essays and sentences retain Thoreau's famous confidence and attention. Editor and Thoreau scholar Dean (Faith in a Seed) appends copious notes, along with passages from Thoreau's still unpublished, unfinished "The Dispersion of Seeds." ---Publishers' Weekly
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Details
- Bookseller
- Monongahela Books (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 55
- Title
- WILD FRUITS: Thoreau's Rediscovered Lost Manuscript
- Author
- Henry Davd Thoreau (edited by Bradley P. Dean)
- Illustrator
- Abigail Rorer
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover with dust jacket
- Book Condition
- Used - Near Fine
- Jacket Condition
- Near Fine
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- First Edition
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Publisher
- W.W. Norton & Company
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Pages
- 409
- Size
- 10 x 7
- Weight
- 0.00 lbs
- Keywords
- wild edible plants, botany, American literature, Transcendentalism, Man & Nature
- Bookseller catalogs
- American Literature; Americans & Nature; Transcendentalism;
Terms of Sale
Monongahela Books
About the Seller
Monongahela Books
About Monongahela Books
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Facsimile
- An exact copy of an original work. In books, it refers to a copy or reproduction, as accurate as possible, of an original...
- Leaves
- Very generally, "leaves" refers to the pages of a book, as in the common phrase, "loose-leaf pages." A leaf is a single sheet...
- New
- A new book is a book previously not circulated to a buyer. Although a new book is typically free of any faults or defects, "new"...
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...