The Maine Woods (Classic, Nature, Penguin) - Softcover

Thoreau, Henry David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140170138 ISBN 13: 9780140170139

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 1988

Synopsis

"What a wilderness walk for a man to take alone!...Here was traveling of the old heroic kind over the unaltered face of nature." -Henry David Thoreau

Over a period of three years, Thoreau made three trips to the largely unexplored woods of Maine. He climbed mountains, paddled a canoe by moonlight, and dined on cedar beer, hemlock tea and moose lips. Taking notes constantly, Thoreau was just as likely to turn his observant eye to the habits and languages of the Abnaki Indians or the arduous life of the logger as he was to the workings of nature. He acutely observed the rivers, lakes, mountains, wolves, moose, and stars in the dark sky. He also told of nights sitting by the campfire, and of meeting men who communicated with each other by writing on the trunks of trees. In The Maine Woods, Thoreau captured a wilder side of America and revealed his own adventurous spirit.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

About this title

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.

Edward Hoagland's books include The Courage of Turtles, Walking the Dead Diamond River, Red Wolves and Black Bears, and Notes from the Century Before: A Journal from British Columbia.

Synopsis:

This is an autobiographical narrative by Henry David Thoreau, originally published in 1864. It contains three accounts of trips to Maine: "Ktaadn", describing an excursion to Mt Ktaadn in 1846 - "Chesuncook", a journey from Bangor to Chesuncook Lake in 1853 - and "The Allegash and East Branch", concerned with a voyage from Bangor to St John's Lakes by way of Moosehead and Chesuncook, returning via the east branch of the Penobscot in 1857.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0140170138
• ISBN 13: 9780140170139
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 480