A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

by Henry David Thoreau, Carl F. Hovde (Editor), William L. Howarth (Editor), Elizabeth Hall Witherell (Editor), John McPhee (Introduction)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691118789
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	06/13/2004
Series:	Writings of Henry D. Thoreau , #19
Edition description:	With a New introduction by John McPhee
Pages:	624
Sales rank:	399,116
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts in 1817. He graduated from Harvard in 1837, the same year he began his lifelong Journal. Inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau became a key member of the Transcendentalist movement that included Margaret Fuller and Bronson Alcott. The Transcendentalists' faith in nature was tested by Thoreau between 1845 and 1847 when he lived for twenty-six months in a homemade hut at Walden Pond. While living at Walden, Thoreau worked on the two books published during his lifetime: Walden (1854) and A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849). Several of his other works, including The Maine Woods, Cape Cod, and Excursions, were published posthumously. Thoreau died in Concord, at the age of forty-four, in 1862.

Date of Birth:

July 12, 1817

Date of Death:

May 6, 1862

Place of Birth:

Concord, Massachusetts

Place of Death:

Concord, Massachusetts

Education:

Concord Academy, 1828-33); Harvard University, 1837

Table of Contents

Introduction by John McPhee ix

Concord River 5

Saturday 15

Sunday 43

Monday 117

Tuesday 179

Wednesday 235

Thursday 298

Friday 334

Index 395