This new paperback edition of Henry D. Thoreau's compelling account of Cape Cod contains the complete, definitive text of the original. Introduced by American poet and literary critic Robert Pinsky--himself a resident of Cape Cod--this volume contains some of Thoreau's most beautiful writings.

In the plants, animals, topography, weather, and people of Cape Cod, Thoreau finds "another world" Encounters with the ocean dominate this book, from the fatal shipwreck of the opening chapter to his later reflections on the Pilgrims' landing and reconnaissance. Along the way, Thoreau relates the experiences of fishermen and oystermen, farmers and salvagers, lighthouse-keepers and ship captains, as well as his own intense confrontations with the sea as he travels the land's outermost margins. Chronicles of exploration, settlement, and survival on the Cape lead Thoreau to reconceive the history of New England--and to recognize the parochialism of history itself.

Henry D. Thoreau traveled to the backwoods of Maine in 1846, 1853, and 1857. Originally published in 1864, and published now with a new introduction by Paul Theroux, this volume is a powerful telling of those journeys through a rugged and largely unspoiled land. It presents Thoreau's fullest account of the wilderness.

"The Maine Woods" is classic Thoreau: a personal story of exterior and interior discoveries in a natural setting--all conveyed in taut, masterly prose. Thoreau's evocative renderings of the life of the primitive forest--its mountains, waterways, fauna, flora, and inhabitants--are timeless and valuable on their own. But his impassioned protest against the despoilment of nature in the name of commerce and sport, which even by the 1850s threatened to deprive Americans of the "tonic of wildness," makes "The Maine Woods" an especially vital book for our own time.

"Excursions" presents texts of nine essays, including some of Henry D. Thoreau's most engaging and popular works, newly edited and based on the most authoritative versions of each. These essays represent Thoreau in many stages of his writing career, ranging from 1842--when he accepted Emerson's commission to review four volumes of botanical and zoological catalogues in an essay that was published in "The Dial" as "Natural History of Massachusetts"--to 1862, when he prepared "Wild Apples," a lecture he had delivered during the Concord Lyceum's 1859-1860 season, for publication in the "Atlantic Monthly" after his death. Three other early meditations on natural history and human nature, "A Winter Walk," "A Walk to Wachusett," and "The Landlord," were originally published in 1842 and 1843. Lively, light pieces, they reveal Thoreau's early use of themes and approaches that recur throughout his work. "A Yankee in Canada," a book-length account of an 1850 trip to Quebec that was published in part in 1853, is a fitting companion to "Cape Cod" and "The Maine Woods," Thoreau's other long accounts of explorations of internal as well as external geography. In the last four essays, "The Succession of Forest Trees" (1860), "Autumnal Tints" (1862), "Walking" (1862), and "Wild Apples" (1862), Thoreau describes natural and philosophical phenomena with a breadth of view and generosity of tone that are characteristic of his mature writing. In their skillful use of precisely observed details to arrive at universal conclusions, these late essays exemplify Transcendental natural history at its best.

This collection of fifty-three early pieces by Thoreau represents the full range of his youthful imagination. Collected, arranged, and carefully edited for the first time here, the writings date from 1828 to 1852 and cover a broad range of subjects: learning, morals, literature, history, politics, and love. Included is a major essay on Sir Walter Raleigh that was not published during the author's lifetime and a fragmentary college piece here published for the first time. Titles of essays published in the volume are given below. Early Essays * The Seasons * Anxieties and Delights of a Discoverer * Men Whose Pursuit Is Money * Of Keeping a Private Journal *"We Are Apt to Become What Others ...Think Us to Be" * Forms, Ceremonies, and Restraints of Polite Society * A Man of Business, a Man of Pleasure, a Man of the World * Musings * Kinds of Energetic Character * Privileges and Pleasures of a Literary Man * Severe and Mild Punishments * Popular Feeling * Style May ...Offend against Simplicity * The Book of the Seasons * Sir Henry Vane * Literary Digressions * Foreign Influence on American Literature * Life and Works of Sir W. Scott * The Love of Stories * Cultivation of the Imagination * The Greek Classic Poets * The Meaning of "Fate" * Whether the Government Ought to Educate * Travellers & Inhabitants * History ...of the Roman Republic * A Writer's Nationality and Individual Genius * L'Allegro & Il Penseroso * All Men Are Mad * The Speeches of Moloch & the Rest * People of Different Sections * Gaining or Exercising Public Influence * Titles of Books * Sublimity * The General Obligation to Tell the Truth *"Being Content with Common Reasons" * The Duty, Inconvenience and Dangers of Conformity * Moral Excellence * Barbarities of Civilized States * T. Pomponius Atticus * Class Book Autobiography *"The Commercial Spirit of Modern Times" Miscellanies * * DIED ...Miss Anna Jones * Aulus Persius Flaccus * The Laws of Menu * Sayings of Confucius * Dark Ages * Chinese Four Books * Homer. Ossian. Chaucer. * Hermes Trismegistus ...From the Gulistan of Saadi * Sir Walter Raleigh * Thomas Carlyle and His Works * Love * Chastity & Sensuality

Thoreau's compelling account of Cape Cod is here presented in the complete and definitive text. His trips to the Cape, he wrote, were intended to afford "a better view than I had yet had of the ocean." In the plants, animals, topography, weather, people, and human works of Massachusetts' long projection into the Atlantic, he finds "another world." Encounters with the ocean dominate the book, from the fatal shipwreck of the opening episode to the late reflections on the Pilgrims' Cape Cod landing and reconnaissance. Along the way, Thoreau relates the experiences of fishermen and oystermen, farmers and salvagers, lighthouse-keepers and ship-captains, as well as his own intense confrontations with the sea as he travels the land's outermost margins. Chronicles of exploration, settlement, and survival on the Cape lead Thoreau to reconceive the history of New England and to recognize the parochialism of history itself.

"The Maine Woods" is a characteristically Thoreauvian book: a personal account of exploration, of exterior and interior discovery in a natural setting, conveyed in taut, workmanlike prose. Thoreau's evocative renderings of the life of the primitive forest--its mountains, waterways, fauna, flora, and inhabitants--are valuable in themselves. But his impassioned protest against despoilment in the name of commerce and sport, which even by the 1850s threatened to deprive Americans of the "tonic of wildness," makes "The Maine Woods" an especially vital book for our time. This edition presents Thoreau's fullest account of the wilderness as he intended it.