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Henry David Thoreau

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:20,000.00 - 30,000.00 USD
Henry David Thoreau

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Auction Date:2014 Oct 15 @ 18:00 (UTC-05:00 : EST/CDT)
Location:236 Commercial St., Suite 100, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
Important and extremely early handwritten manuscript draft for Thoreau's first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, unsigned, one page both sides, 8 x 10, no date but circa 1847. This remarkable leaf, apparently from his second draft of the book, contains Thoreau's thoughts on man’s kindredness to nature, and how the materiality of man’s life is prefigured (ready-at-hand) in nature. The manuscript contains both published and unpublished text, with only 25% or so of this content actually making it into the printed book. The remaining 75% evidences Thoreau’s editorial reworking of the material, but was ultimately passed over for inclusion.

The manuscript begins with a passage that was included for publication, appearing on page 333 of the first edition of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. In full: "[In the wildest nature, there is not only the material of the most cultivated life, and a sort] of anticipation of the last result, but a greater refinement already than is ever attained by man. There is papyrus by the riverside, and rushes for light, and the goose only flies overhead, ages before the studious are born or letters invented, and that literature which the former suggest, and even from the first have rudely serves, it may be man does not yet use them to express." A pencil note by Thoreau at the end of this paragraph reads "Nature is &c, see scrap," indicating where the text should pick up and apparently referencing another fragment of a draft; in the published version, the next sentence begins with these penciled in words, reading: 'Nature is prepared to welcome into her scenery the finest work of human art.'

The remaining text present in this manuscript was removed prior to publication, and continues the themes set forth with a deeper Transcendentalist vision of man’s oneness with nature. In full (transcribed as per Thoreau’s penciled emendations): "There is a humanity in nature which is not identical with man’s which yet serves him and serenely smiles on him, but would much more serve & bless the natural man with its sympathy. Material things are to some extent man’s kindred, and subject to the same laws with him. He and they follow one fate. Even a taper is his relative, and burns not eternally, but only a certain number of his hours. He sleeps, and ever he wakes a taper is extinguished. Those tapers the fixed stars, which are not both lit and burnt out in the life of the individual man but it may be in the life of the race, which will be found extinguished when woken from his waking sleep, are his more distant relatives. Yet the farthest and largest star is but a lamp to light the way for man. The hairsbreadth or his nail or his finger or his span or by outstretched arms are the units of measure for starry distance. So much is finite or measured by him & belongs wholly to the same sphere or natural dynasty with himself. He witnesses its birth and its decay. But what man's life does not thus embrace, he sees from one side, stationary and eternal, and it thrills him to behold. I love to recognize my affinity to Nature in all things."

A redacted portion of this paragraph, struck through in pencil, reads: "Space is but so many of his hairsbreadth wide; the white crescent on his nail is the unit of measure even for starry distances; his middle finger measures how many digits into space; he extends a few times his thumb and finger, and the continent is spanned; he stretches out his arms, and the sea is fathomed. These things." In very good to fine condition, with intersecting folds, uniform light toning, and creasing to top edges.

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers is considered Thoreau's 'most transcendentalist' work. Though the text ostensibly is the record of a week-long boat trip taken in 1839 along the named rivers, the historical and naturalist record of the trip is liberally blended with associative flights of transcendentalist thought. This manuscript provides evidence that some of these musings went unpublished, affirming the book’s transcendental quality.

No complete manuscript of this important title is known to have survived, making Thoreau's preliminary material of considerable scholarly importance. Formally begun in 1845 at Walden Pond, it is known that Thoreau wrote a second draft in 1847 which was substantively edited at least twice before finally being accepted by Boston publisher James Munroe for printing. Autograph material from A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers rarely enters the collecting community, making the present manuscript leaf a literary find of the utmost desirability, with its text—especially the unpublished portion—reflecting many of Thoreau’s core Transcendentalist beliefs.