THOREAU, HENRY DAVID | Excursions. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1863

The Property of a Gentleman

THOREAU, HENRY DAVID

Excursions. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1863

8vo (4 1/2 x 7 1/8 in; 112 x 180 mm). Frontispiece portrait; very minor toning and offsetting. Original blue green blindstamped “Z cloth", covers decoratively bordered in blind with central wreath motif, spine gilt-lettered with floral motif in gilt, brown coated endpapers. In custom quarter green morocco over cloth covered board clamshell case. 

First edition, one of 1,558 copies printed, of Thoreau's third book

"In short, all good things are wild and free." - Thoreau, "Walking"

This posthumous collection of naturalist essays, including "A Winter Walk," "Autumnal Tints," and "Night and Moonlight". This was Thoreau's third book, preceded only by A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849) and Walden (1854). When Thoreau died of tuberculosis in May of 1862 at the age of 44, nothing of his had been published in the eight intervening years since Walden. The editor of this book, who also contributed the 26-page "Biographical Sketch" of Thoreau, was his friend and fellow transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson. The frontispiece portrait that appears in this volume is the first publication of his Thoreau's likeness anywhere. 

In fine condition

REFERENCES

Blanck 20111; A3.1.a