A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

Title: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

Author: Thoreau, Henry D. [David]

Publication: Boston and Cambridge: James Munroe and Company, 1849.

Description: First edition of Henry David Thoreau’s first book, an account of the 1839 river journey he undertook with his brother, blending travel narrative with Transcendentalist reflections. One of the first 550 bound copies. In repaired publisher's presentation binding of full brown cloth stamped in blind with ornamentation within a 5-rule frame and with gilt lettering on the spine. 8 x 5.25 inches; 413, [3] pages, including publisher's advertisement for Walden on final leaf. Contemporary owner signature on front free endpaper. Later acquired by Arthur Williams Hall (1873-1952) of Massachusetts, bibliophile and manufacturer of laboratory equipment, with his notes in pencil on the front pastedown; thence by descent through three generations, before entering the trade. Binding with moderate edgewear, professional repairs to both spine ends, a horizontal slit across the spine about 1-inch from the tail, a second set of pastedowns apparently added, staining to the endpapers, and scattered foxing to the interior. Title page and following leaf unopened. The repairs are likely early 20th-century. About Very Good.

The book famously did not sell well, and the publisher, who had been storing the unsold copies, asked Thoreau to take them away. Of the 1000 copies printed, Thoreau stored the 706 unsold copies at his family home in Concord. In October 1853, he wrote in his journal, "I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself." Reference: Blanck, J. Bibliography of American literature, 20104.