Wild Fruits: Thoreau's Rediscovered Last Manuscript

Thoreau, Henry David

ISBN 10: 0393321150 / ISBN 13: 9780393321159

Published by W. W. Norton & Company, 2001

May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Seller Inventory # G0393321150I4N00

Synopsis:

The final harvest of our great nature writer’s last years, Wild Fruits presents Thoreau’s distinctly American gospel―a sacramental vision of nature in which "the tension between Thoreau the naturalist and Thoreau the missionary for nature’s wonders invigorates nearly every page" (Time). In transcribing the 150-year-old manuscript’s cryptic handwriting and complex notations, Thoreau specialist Bradley Dean has performed a "heroic feat of decipherment" (Booklist) to bring this great work to light. Readers will discover "passages that reach for the transcendentalist ideal of writing new scriptures, yet grounding this Bible in a vision of practical ecology" (Boston). Beautifully illustrated throughout with line drawings of the natural life Thoreau considers on his walks, Wild Fruits is "well worth any nature lover’s attention" (Christian Science Monitor).

About the Authors: Henry David Thoreau spent almost his entire life in the village of Concord, Massachusetts, where he was born in 1817. After graduating from Harvard College in 1837, he developed a deep friendship with the writer and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, the foremost figure in the Transcendentalist movement. Emerson’s emphasis on the cultivation of intuition and experience as keys to personal and social enlightenment profoundly influenced Thoreau. In 1845, Thoreau built a small cabin on a parcel of land Emerson owned near Walden Pond, where he lived for most of two years, seeking a new relationship to nature, society, and his own self. His experiences there are the raw material of his masterpiece, Walden, or Life in the Woods. Although he was first and last a writer and outdoorsman, Thoreau worked as a surveyor and handyman and was an active abolitionist and opponent of war and imperialism. He died in 1862 of tuberculosis.

Bradley P. Dean, an independent scholar living in West Peterborough, New Hampshire, has written extensively on Thoreau's life and writings, and has edited two of Thoreau's previously unpublished booklength manuscripts.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Wild Fruits: Thoreau's Rediscovered Last ...
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Publication Date: 2001
Binding: Paperback
Illustrator: Rorer, Abigail
Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket