Henry D. Thoreau's classic "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers" is published now as a new paperback edition and includes an introduction by noted writer John McPhee. This work--unusual for its symbolism and structure, its criticism of Christian institutions, and its many-layered storytelling--was Thoreau's first published book.

In the late summer of 1839, Thoreau and his older brother John made a two-week boat-and-hiking trip from Concord, Massachusetts, to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. After John's sudden death in 1842, Thoreau began to prepare a memorial account of their excursion. He wrote two drafts of this story at Walden Pond, which he continued to revise and expand until 1849, when he arranged for its publication at his own expense. The book's heterodoxy and apparent formlessness troubled its contemporary audience. Modern readers, however, have come to see it as an appropriate predecessor to "Walden," with Thoreau's story of a river journey depicting the early years of his spiritual and artistic growth.

"The primary aim of this book is to give its readers an idea of the places Thoreau describes in his own books. The importance of those places will depend upon the readers' critical views of Thoreau. To those who read him literally, the maps will provide a convenient way of following his travels in Massachusetts, Maine, Canada, Cape Cod, Minnesota--locations that he actually visited in his life. To those who read him figuratively, the maps will depict symbolic rivers, ponds, mountains--settings that are the imaginative products of his art."--From the Introduction to A Thoreau Gazetteer. Originally published in 1970. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

"The primary aim of this book is to give its readers an idea of the places Thoreau describes in his own books. The importance of those places will depend upon the readers' critical views of Thoreau. To those who read him literally, the maps will provide a convenient way of following his travels in Massachusetts, Maine, Canada, Cape Cod, Minnesota--locations that he actually visited in his life. To those who read him figuratively, the maps will depict symbolic rivers, ponds, mountains--settings that are the imaginative products of his art."--From the Introduction to A Thoreau Gazetteer. Originally published in 1970. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This first volume of the Journal covers the early years of Thoreau's rapid intellectual and artistic growth. The Journal reflects his reading, travels, and contacts with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and other Transcendentalists. With characteristic reticence, Thoreau mentions only a few episodes in his emotional history: an ill-fated romance, the death of his elder brother, and an unhappy sojourn on Staten Island, where he tried to write for New York periodicals. Parts of Thoreau's Journal have been published, but always with large omissions of text and with considerable grooming of its erratic manuscript style. This edition presents the entire surviving manuscript in a text preserving Thoreau's words as he originally wrote them.

In the late summer of 1839 Thoreau and his elder brother John made a two-week boat-and-hiking trip from Concord, Massachusetts, to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. After John's sudden death in 1842, Henry began to prepare a memorial account of their excursion. At Walden Pond he wrote two drafts of this story, which he continued to revise and expand until 1849, when he arranged for its publication at his own expense. The contemporary audience for A Week was troubled by its heterodoxy and apparent formlessness; but modern readers have come to see it as an appropriate predecessor to Walden, with Thoreau's story of a river journey actually depicting the early years of his spiritual and artistic growth.

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.