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Henry David Thoreau. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Boston and Cambridge: James Munroe and Company, 1849....
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Description
Very scarce presentation copy
Henry David Thoreau. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack
Rivers. Boston and Cambridge: James Munroe and Company,
1849.8vo. One-page advertisement for Walden at end. Publisher's brown cloth, blind-embossed on covers, gilt-lettered on spine; quarter morocco folding case.
FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING, FIRST ISSUE OF THE AUTHOR'S FIRST BOOK. PRESENTATION COPY, INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR on the front flyleaf in pencil: "Rev. Barzillai Frost / with the regards of / the Author."
One thousand sets of sheets of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers were printed at Thoreau's expense in 1849. However, the book did not sell well, and on October 28, 1853, 706 copies were sent back to Thoreau where they would sit in his attic bedroom for the next nine years. Ticknor and Fields eventually bought the remaining bound copies and unbound sheets in 1862 for 40 cents apiece.
Rev. Barzillai Frost of Concord, Massachusetts, who according to DAB (Vol. XI, p. 458) played a role in James Russell Lowell's reform after an infraction during his senior year at Harvard: "At the end of his [Lowell's] senior year came a concrete offense which could not escape punishment...On the grounds of 'continued neglect of his college duties' the faculty promptly rusticated him to the care and instruction of Rev. Barzillai Frost in the neighboring town of Concord until 'the Saturday before Commencement.' Thus he was prevented from reading his own class poem, a young conservative's fling both jaunty and grave, at causes and persons soon to enlist his sympathies."
VERY RARE: According to online auction databases only three copies of presentation copies by Thoreau of this work have appeared at auction since this copy sold in 1974.
Condition: Binding recased and refurbished, with repairs to spine ends and corners; some color apparently retouched. Some foxing to endpapers, but very fresh internally.
References: BAL 20104; Borst A1.1.a1; Johnson, High Spots 73.
Provenance: Rev. Barzillai Frost (presentation inscription); Miss B. L. Dabney (inscribed by Frost to on front flyleaf, dated 27 July 1858); William E. Stockhausen (his sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet, 20 November 1974, lot 454); purchased from George R. Minkoff, Inc., Great Barrington, MA, 1982. From the William A. Strutz Library.
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Auction Info
2024 June 27 Important English and American Literature: The William A. Strutz Library, Part I, Rare Books Signature® Auction #6295 (go to Auction Home page)
Auction Dates
June, 2024
27th
Thursday
Bids + Registered Phone Bidders: 2
Lot Tracking Activity: N/A
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25% on the first $1,000,000 (minimum $49), plus 20% of any amount between $1,000,000 and $5,000,000, plus 15% of any amount over $5,000,000 per lot.
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