In 1845, Henry David Thoreau moved into a cabin in the woods at Walden Pond to record a philosophical experiment in living: to simplify his life, to support himself entirely by his own labor, and to draw spiritual sustenance from his surroundings. The result: Walden: Or, Life in the Woods (1854).  In 1846, Thoreau refused to pay a mandated poll tax, refusing to support a government that protected slavery and had launched an aggressive war against Mexico. In his essay “Civil Disobedience,� Thoreau argues that it is the duty of every citizen to disobey immoral laws—and willingly suffer the legal consequences for doing so.

Meditations on human existence, society, government and other topics.

Henry David Thoreau is considered one of the leading figures in early American literature, and Walden is without doubt his most influential book. Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful hardbacks make perfect gifts for book lovers, or wonderful additions to your own collection. This edition includes a new afterword by Sam Gilpin. Walden recounts the author's experiences living in a small house in the woods around Walden Pond near Concord in Massachusetts. Thoreau constructed the house himself, with the help of a few friends, to see if he could live 'deliberately' - independently and apart from society. The result is an intriguing work which blends natural history with philosophical insights, and includes many illuminating quotations from other authors. Thoreau's wooden shack has won a place for itself in the collective American psyche, a remarkable achievement for a book with such modest and rustic beginnings.

Walden (1854), Henry David Thoreau's landmark meditation on the importance of solitude, reflection, and proximity to nature, is presented in this Norton Library edition alongside three of his most influential political essays: "Civil Disobedience," "Slavery in Massachusetts," and "A Plea for Captain John Brown." An introduction by Jedediah Britton-Purdy reacquaints Thoreau to the contemporary reader a nuanced account of Thoreau's historical and intellectual contexts, inviting a new generation to connect with the transcendentalist's timeless philosophy.

Philosopher, naturalist and rugged individualist, Thoreau has inspired generations of readers to think for themselves and to find meaning and beauty in nature. This representative sampling includes five of his most frequently read and cited essays: "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" (1849), "Life without Principle" (1863), "Slavery in Massachusetts" (1854), "A Plea for Captain John Brown" (1869) and "Walking" (1862). Reprinted from standard editions.

HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics. "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. " - Henry David Thoreau, Walden

One of the most influential and compelling books in American literature, Walden is a vivid account of the years that Henry D. Thoreau spent alone in a secluded cabin at Walden Pond. This edition--introduced by noted American writer John Updike--celebrates the perennial importance of a classic work, originally published in 1854. Much of Walden's material is derived from Thoreau's journals and contains such engaging pieces from the lively "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For" and "Brute Neighbors" to the serene "Reading" and "The Pond in the Winter." Other famous sections involve Thoreau's visits with a Canadian woodcutter and with an Irish family, a trip to Concord, and a description of his bean field. This is the complete and authoritative text of Walden--as close to Thoreau's original intention as all available evidence allows. This is the authoritative text of Walden and the ideal presentation of Thoreau's great document of social criticism and dissent.

The ultimate gift edition of Walden for bibliophiles, aficionados, and scholars "Replaces all other available editions of Walden as the most attractive and reliable way to approach this great American book."-Joel Porte, author of Consciousness and Culture: Emerson and Thoreau Reviewed This is the authoritative edition of an American literaru classic: Henry David Thoreau's Walden, an elegantly written record of his experiment in simple living. With this edition, Thoreau scholar Jeffrey S. Cramer has meticulously corrected errors and omissions from previous editions of Walden andhere provides illuminating notes on the biographical, historical, and geographical contexts of the great nineteenth-century writer and thinker's life. Cramer's newly edited text is based on the original 1854 edition of Walden, with emendations taken from Thoreau's draft manuscripts, his own markings on the page proofs, and notes in his personal copy of the book. In the editor's notes to the volume, Cramer quotes from sources Thoreau actually read, showing how he used, interpreted, and altered these sources. Cramer also glosses Walden with references to Thoreau's essays, journals, and correspondence. With the wealth of material in this edition, readers will find an unprecedented opportunity to immerse themselves in the unique and fascinating world of Thoreau. Anyone who has read and loved Walden willwant to own and treasure this gift edition. Those wishing to read Walden forthe first time will not find a better guide than Jeffrey S. Cramer.

"Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of each." Modernity rules our lives by clock and calendar, dividing the stream of time into units and coordinating every passing moment with the universal globe. Henry David Thoreau subverted both clock and calendar, using them not to regulate time's passing but to open up and explore its presence. This little volume thus embodies, in small compass, Thoreau's own ambition to "live in season"--to turn with the living sundial of the world, and, by attuning ourselves to nature, to heal our modern sense of discontinuity with our surroundings. Ralph Waldo Emerson noted with awe that from flowers alone, Thoreau could tell the calendar date within two days; children remembered long into adulthood how Thoreau showed them white waterlilies awakening not by the face of a clock but at the first touch of the sun. As Thoreau wrote in Walden, "Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is." Drawn from the full range of Thoreau's journals and published writings, and arranged according to season, The Daily Henry David Thoreau allows us to discover the endless variation and surprise to be found in the repetitions of mundane cycles. Thoreau saw in the kernel of each day an earth enchanted, one he honed into sentences tuned with an artist's eye and a musician's ear. Thoreau's world lives on in his writing so that we too may discover, even in a fallen world, a beauty worth defending.

In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World is a vintage classic that pairs passages by writer Henry David Thoreau with images by photographer Eliot Porter. Ahead of its time, this bestselling-and long-out-of-print-classic monograph was first published in 1962. Porter masterfully created color photographs of the New England woods to pair with the writings of Henry David Thoreau. Often referred to as the very first coffee table book ever published Both Porter and Thoreau-although they lived a century apart-worked endlessly to preserve nature and protect it from manmade interference. First published by Porter and Sierra Club founder David Brower The finished "collaboration" arrived in an era when environmental causes were not as prominent in the public consciousness, yet the book became an overnight publishing success. In Wildness is a wonderful pick for environmentally aware buyers, photography fans, and anyone looking for a unique book that combines literature and photography. Pairs passages from one of the most revered American writers of the nineteenth century with a premier photographer of the twentieth century Features a re-envisioned cover of the beautiful classic Offers hope and inspiration for the preservation of our natural world Gorgeous on display on the coffee table

As a unique feature, the Third Edition includes generous excerpts from Thoreau's journal, reprinted by special arrangements with Princeton University Press from the definitive edition of his writings. Spanning the years 1845-54, these selections vividly display Thoreau's intensive exploration of his local landscape; the fusion of literary and natural history field work that informs Walden, "Walking," and "Wild Apples"; and the growth of his environmental imagination. "Reviews and Posthumous Assessments" for this edition collects eight new reviews of Thoreau's antislavery and late environmental essays as well as of Walden. To the influential portraits of Thoreau by Ralph Waldo Emerson and James Russell Lowell, the Third Edition adds John Burroughs's "Another Word on Thoreau," his response to them and to his great predecessor. "Recent Criticism" includes eighteen selections of the best historical, political, philosophical, poststructuralist, and environmental criticism of Thoreau's writing since the mid-twentieth century. To classic pieces by E. B. White, Leo Marx, Barbara Johnson, and Stanley Cavell, the Third Edition adds essays by nine new contributors, among them Laurence Buell, Laura Dassow Walls, Evan Carton, Robert A. Gross, Albert J. von Frank, Steven Fink, and William Rossi. A Chronology of Thoreau's life and work, new to the Third Edition, and an expanded and updated Selected Bibliography are also included.

Thoreau's political writing is intensely personal and direct. Both his life and work focus uncompromisingly on the question 'how should I live?', and for Thoreau, no element of day-to-day existence is left untouched by moral and political issues. This 1996 edition of Thoreau's political essays includes 'Civil Disobedience', selections from Walden, 'Life Without Principle', and the anti-slavery addresses, such as 'Slavery in Massachusetts'. In her introduction, Nancy L. Rosenblum places the essays in the context of Thoreau's life of self-examination, and the debates about the abolition of slavery, and she analyses the themes of citizenship and resistance that have made Thoreau an enduring influence in political philosophy and practice.

Thoreau's political writing is intensely personal and direct. Both his life and work focus uncompromisingly on the question "how should I live?". This edition of Thoreau's political essays includes "Civil Disobedience", selections from Walden, and the anti-slavery addresses. In her introduction, Nancy L. Rosenblum places the essays in the context of Thoreau's life of self-examination, and analyzes the themes of citizenship and resistance that have made Thoreau an enduring influence in political philosophy and practice.

The perfect books for the true book lover, Penguin's Great Ideas series features twelve more groundbreaking works by some of history's most prodigious thinkers. Each volume is beautifully packaged with a unique type-driven design that highlights the bookmaker's art. Offering great literature in great packages at great prices, this series is ideal for those readers who want to explore and savor the Great Ideas that have shaped our world.Thoreau's account of his solitary and self-sufficient home in the New England woods remains an inspiration to the environmental movement-a call to his fellow men to abandon their striving, materialistic existences of 'quiet desperation' for a simple life within their means, finding spiritual truth through awareness of the sheer beauty of their surroundings.

A beautiful illustrated edition of Thoreau's classic treatise on man and nature. "Our life is frittered away by detail. . . . Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!" Henry David Thoreau built his small cabin on the shore of Walden Pond in 1845. For the next two years, he lived there as simply as possible, learning to eliminate the unnecessary material and spiritual details that intrude upon human happiness. Thoreau described his experiences in Walden, using vivid, forceful prose that transforms his reflections on nature into richly evocative metaphors. In a world obsessed with technology and luxury, this American classic about seeking "the essential facts of life" seems more relevant today than ever. This beautiful, fully illustrated edition of Walden brings a rarely seen visual and artistic dimension to Thoreau's philosophical masterpiece.

"I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well" Eschewing a conventional residence and lifestyle, Thoreau set up home in the woods on the shore of Walden Pond in Massachusetts, a mile from his nearest neighbor, and earned his living by labor of his own hands. Most people, he says are so occupied with the factitious care and toils of life that its finer fruits remain unplucked. So he went to Walden in an attempt to find, in the seemingly simple routines of life stripped to its essentials, the shape beneath what is apparently chaotic. Walden describes Thoreau's domestic economy, the wildlife, the few visitors to his remote wooden hut, and his reflections on the quality of human life in age of growing materialism and of prevailing work ethic. It has become poignant critique of the values of Thoreau's society which retains its relevance and extraordinary power today. "A comprehensive paper edition, with an introduction and chronology of Thoreau's life and times"

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY BENJAMIN MARKOVITS In 1845 Thoreau, a Harvard-educated 28-year-old, went to live by himself in the woods in Massachusetts. He stayed for over two years, living self-sufficiently in a small cabin built with his own hands. Walden is his personal account of the experience, in which he documents the beauty and fulfilment to be found in the wilderness, and his philosophical and political motivations for rejecting the materialism which continues to define our modern world.

In 1845 Henry David Thoreau left his pencil-manufacturing business and began building a cabin on the shore of Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts. This lyrical yet practical-minded book is at once a record of the 26 months Thoreau spent in withdrawal from society -- an account of the daily minutiae of building, planting, hunting, cooking, and, always, observing nature -- and a declaration of independence from the oppressive mores of the world he left behind. Elegant, witty, and quietly searching, Walden remains the most persuasive American argument for simplicity of life clarity of conscience.

For the first time, the authoritative editions of works by major American novelists, poets, scholars, and essayists collected in the hardcover volumes of The Library of America are being published singly in a series of handsome paperback books. A distinguished writer has contributed an introduction for each volume, which also includes a chronology of the author's life and career, an essay on the text, and notes.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

`The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation' In 1845 Henry David Thoreau left his home town of Concord, Massachusetts to begin a new life alone, in a rough hut he built himself a mile and a half away on the north-west shore of Walden Pond. Walden is Thoreau's classic autobiographical account of this experiment in solitary living, his refusal to play by the rules of hard work and the accumulation of wealth and above all the freedom it gave him to adapt his living to the natural world around him. This new edition of Walden traces the sources of Thoreau's reading and thinking and considers the author in the context of his birthplace and his sense of its history - social, economic and natural. In addition, an ecological appendix provides modern identifications of the myriad plants and animals to which Thoreau gave increasingly close attention as he became acclimatized to his life in the woods by Walden Pond. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.