*SOLD*
 
Walden; or, Life in the Woods
Henry David Thoreau
Boston, 1854
 
Even in the comparatively sleepy mid-19th century, Thoreau was feeling the crush of modernity squeezing the joy from his soul.
 
So he went to the woods to live his way and produced a book that transmits a clarion call through the ages to those of us drowning in the excesses of our head-spinning times.  Listen, all rejecters of conformity and those unwilling to accept a zombie existence of mediocre melancholy in exchange for always soon-to-be outdated merchandise!
 
Walden is always available, but practically never in this condition.  The binding is as bright and crisp as morning at Walden Pond.  The gilt lettering shines like the sun that illuminated Thoreau’s cabin doorway – even the “S” in “Woods,” which is printed so precariously on an edge that it’s usually half-gone in most other copies.  The pages are incredibly fresh and cuttingly sharp, devoid of even the lightest foxing always found in the usual best copies around - the earliest ads, April, inserted in the rear.  Fine.
 
Ownership signature of William Bowditch, a famed Bostonian women’s suffrage advocate and abolitionist who was a member of the Underground Railroad, dated in the month of publication(August, 1854).  He was one year Thoreau’s junior at Harvard, and the two lived just a few rooms away in the same dorm.  Surely, they knew each other – adding yet another dose of electricity to an already charged copy.
 
Ex libris Jacob Chester Chamberlain, legendary turn of the century collector of the greatest books of American Literature, with his acquisition slip laid in the rear(acquired from Boston bookseller, P.K. Foley in September, 1900).  This copy sold at his 1909 auction of swoon-worthy literary treasures.  The book wears his commissioned dust jacket and is housed in a custom chemise and slipcase. 
 
In condition that’s impossible to improve upon, accompanied by noteworthy provenance, this is a copy of seeming divine providence.  If you have the means, this is a no-brainer addition to your library regardless of your collecting focus.