Customer Reviews

The Essays of Henry D. Thoreau: Selected and Edited by Lewis Hyde

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Astonishing that so many pages of such great writing (and such wonderful, interesting annotations) can be purchased for so little money. We have needed an inexpensive annotated edition of Thoreau's best short prose for a very long time, and this clearly fits the bill. Teachers and students, in particular, will find this book extraordinarily useful. The Thoreau material and annotations alone are extraordinarily valuable, but Hyde's excellent introduction on Thoreau's "Prophetic Excursions" make this the best deal available for a Thoreau book. Buy it; you'll be glad you did!

When Professor Hyde set out to use selected Thoreau essays in his seminar at Kenyon College, he found no book that contained the writings he wanted. So he created one that did. The result is this handsome book, made up of 13 political and / or nature essays: Natural History of Massachusetts ~ A Winter Walk ~ Paradise (to be) Regained ~ Ktaadn ~ Civil Disobedience ~ Walking ~ Slavery in Massachusetts ~ Life Without Principle ~ Autumnal Tints ~ The Succession of Forest Trees ~ A Plea for Captain John Brown ~ The Last Days of John Brown ~ and Wild Apples.

Some of these titles are more familiar to us than others, because writings such as "Civil Disobedience" and "Walking" appear in dozens (if not hundreds) of compilation volumes. I found two gems in this book. The first is Hyde's own introductory essay, "Prophetic Excursions," which provides a personal and unique perspective for approaching the genre. The second is "Paradise (to be ) Regained," in which Thoreau reviews the 1842 book, "The Paradise within the Reach of all Men, without Labor, by Powers of Nature and Machinery. An Address to all Intelligent Men" by J.A. Etzler. Talk about FUNNY! Mr. Etzler evidently proposed to use the energy produced by the wind, the tide, the waves, and sunshine in order to power all the machinery needs of mankind. And Henry shoots him down at every turn! One wonders what either man would think of our current solar energy efforts and those proposals to put wind farms on Cape Cod. Of additional interest here are the annotations to the text, in which Hyde lets us in on many of Thoreau's inside jokes and references -- the kinds of remarks that would have been obvious to his contemporaries and to anyone with reading knowledge of classical literature.

Even the cover art was well-chosen for this volume. It's "Water Lily," a painting done by American John La Farge in the early 1860s. The inspiration was obviously taken from "Slavery in Massachusetts," when Thoreau stops in the midst of railing against the injustices of the Fugitive Slave Law to talk about the scent of a water lily:

"It bursts up so pure and fair to the eye, and so sweet to the scent, as if to show us what purity and sweetness reside in, and can be extracted from, the slime and muck of earth. ... It reminds me that Nature has been partner to no Missouri Compromise. ... The foul slime stands for the sloth and vice of man, the decay of humanity; the fragrant flower that springs from it, for the purity and courage which are immortal." (p. 193)

Even in his political essays, Thoreau couldn't avoid making analogies with the natural world. That's one of the points Lewis Hyde makes with this volume: you can't separate the natural from the political when you're dealing with Thoreau's writings. It's impossible to focus on just one or
the other.

I have enjoyed this book to it's fullest degree. I have always been a Thoreau fan, and frequently come back to this book. I am never alone when reading it. I transpose myself into nature on the coldest of days. When I wrote, " Above His Shoulders" I use many metaphors in nature to proceed through my depression and find hope.

Thoreau's work has always inspired me. With the popularity on Into the Wild, thank God we saw an increase in his works. I will forever continue to seek for truth, and find solace in nature. It helped me get through my sexual abuse and treatment.