A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
Henry David Thoreau
Boston, 1849
First edition, first printing of his first book - a mystical work that was most personal to him. Rebound in turn of the century cloth, covers and spine moderately rubbed and scratched, retaining the original cream endpapers with a portrait of Thoreau pasted on a subsequent one. Overall, a Very Good copy chemised in a beautiful blue quarter-morocco case.
Signed by Thoreau on the front endpaper, along with a couple of handwritten corrections to the text in his hand!
This copy was for his friend Theo Brown, a local tailor who also signed his name on the verso of the endpaper. It is identified in a surviving letter from Brown to Thoreau on January 10, 1862 wherein Brown asks Thoreau for two signed copies of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.
“In the back window of Theo. Brown’s tailoring shop, corner of Main and Pearl Streets, where many a hard fought battle of chess had been won and lost, anon was wont to sit the philosopher Thoreau, fashioning the habiliments of the soul, while near him Theo would calmly continue cutting out habiliments for the wear of the body, and Harry Blake, with his eyes glistening with delight behind his gold-bowed glasses, would follow the arguments of each.”(Walden.org)
This copy was once owned by Brown’s grandson, Theo III. Two of his diary entries reference it.
7/10/48:
“Elise and I drove to Concord this morning to attend the annual meeting of the Thoreau Society…Showed the daguerrotype I have of Thoreau [and] also my 1st edition with Thoreau autograph of [A] Week on the Concord & Merrimac[k] Rivers.”
The following entry also physically describes this copy. Theo III had sent it for examination to the famed Thoreau collector, Albert Lownes.
8/20/48:
‘I've had several interesting letters from Albert E. Lownes…about my copy of the “[A] Week on the Concord & Merrimack Rivers”…I sent him my copy and he wrote Aug 19:
"A Week came this morning and I took the first opportunity to examine it carefully. It is a most interesting copy and I congratulate you on owning it. Sometime in the past it must have been rebound. The original yellow or cream colored end papers have been retained, but the leaf bearing Thoreau's portrait has been added. It is quite different in quality from [other copies of this] book -- a heavier laid paper. I compared your copy with 4 others. In my earlier letter I referred to the corrections which Thoreau sometimes made. You may be interested to know that on page 120 he changed the word "work" to “wash." Thank you again for allowing me to see this precious volume. --- With great gratitude I am
Sincerely
Albert E. Lownes.”’
“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. Thoreau interweaves descriptions of natural phenomena, the rural landscape, and local characters with digressions on literature and philosophy, the Native American and Puritan histories of New England, The Bhagavad Gita, the imperfections of Christianity, and many other subjects. 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."(Princeton)
Thoreau’s books signed by him are beyond scarce. Just a few appear in the sales records, the most recent being 70 years ago. Truly a once-in-a-lifetime copy.
Ref: Theo Brown Diaries, Worcester Polytechnic Institute