Henry David Thoreau : Collected Essays and Poems (Library of America) [Hardcover]

Henry David Thoreau (Author), Elizabeth Hall Witherell (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Library of America | Publication Date: April 19, 2001

America's greatest nature writer and a political thinker of worldwide impact, Henry David Thoreau's remarkable essays reflect his speculative and probing cast of mind. In his poems, he gave voice to his private sentiments and spiritual aspirations in the plain style of New England speech. Now, The Library of America brings together these indispensable works in one authoritative volume.

Spanning his entire career, the 27 essays gathered here vary in style from the ambling rhythm of "Natural History of Massachusetts" and "A Winter Walk"to the concentrated moral outrage of "Slavery in Massachusetts" and "A Plea for Captain John Brown." Included are "Civil Disobedience," Thoreau's great exploration of the conflict between individual conscience and state power that continues to influence political thinkers and activists; "Walking," a meditation on wildness and civilization; and "Life Without Principle,"a passionate critique of American materialism and conformity. Also here are literary essays, including pieces on Homer, Chaucer, and Carlyle; the travel essay "A Yankee in Canada"; the three speeches in defense of John Brown; and essays such as "Autumnal Tints," "Wild Fruits," and "Huckleberries" that explore natural phenomena around Concord.

Seven poems are published here for the first time, and others are presented in new, previously unpublished versions based on Thoreau's manuscripts.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Ah, 'tis In Vain The Peaceful Din
All Things Are Current Found
All Things Decay
Among The Worst Of Men That Ever Lived
And Once Again
Any Fool Can Make A Rule
The Assabet
At Midnight's Hour I Raised My Head
The Atlantides
Away! Away! Away! Away!
Behold These Flowers
Better Wait
Between The Traveller And The Setting Sun
The Bluebirds
The 'book Of Gems'
The Breeze's Invitation
Brother Where Dost Thou Dwell?
But Now 'no War Nor Battle's Sound'
The Chicadee
Cliffs
Cock-crowing
Conscience
The Coward Ever Sings No Song
Death Cannot Come Too Soon
The Deeds Of King And Meanest Hedger
Delay
Delay In Friendship
The Departure
Die And Be Buried Who Will
Each More Melodious Note I Hear
Each Summer Sound
The Earth
The Echo Of The Sabbath Bell - Heard In The Woods
Ep On A Good Man
Ep On The World
Epitaph
Epitaph On Pursy
Epitath On An Engraver
The Evening Wind
Except, Returning, By The Marlboro
Fair Haven (1)
Fair Haven (2)
The Fall Of The Leaf
Far Oer The Bow
Farewell
The Fisher's Son
Fog (2)
For Though The Eaves Were Rabbited
Forever In My Dream And In My Morning Thought
Free Love
The Freshet
The Friend
Friends
Friendship
Friendship (1)
Friendship (2)
The Funeral Bell
Godfrey Of Boulogne
The Good How Can We Trust?
Great Friend
Greater Is The Depth Of Sadness
Greece
Guido's Aurora
Have Ye No Work For A Man To Do
Haze
He Knows No Change Who Knows The True
The Hero
How Little Curious Is Man
I Am Bound, I Am Bound, For A Distant Shore
I Am Contented You Should Stay
I Am The Autumnal Sun
I Am The Little Irish Boy
I Arose Before Light
I Do Not Fear My Thoughts Will Die
I Have Rolled Near Some Other Spirits Path
I Have Some Frozenfaced Connecticut
I Knew A Man By Sight
I Love A Careless Streamlet
I Mark The Summer's Swift Decline
I Sailed Up A River With A Pleasant Wind
I Saw A Delicate Flower Had Grown Up 2 Feet High
I Seek The Present Time
I Was Born Upon Thy Bank River;
I Was Made Erect And Lone
I Will Obey The Strictest Law Of Love
I'm Guided In The Darkest Night
I'm Not Alone
I'm Thankful That My Life Doth Not Deceive
I've Heard My Neighbor's Pump At Night
I've Searched My Faculties Around
I've Seen Ye, Sisters, On The Mountain-side
If Faults Arise, My Friend Will Send For Me
If From Your Price Ye Will Not Swerve
In Adams Fall
In Days Of Yore, Tis Said, The Swimming Alder
In The Busy Streets, Domains Of Trade
In The East Fames Are Won
Independence
Inspiration (2)
Inspiration (4)
The Inward Morning
It Is A Real Place
The Just Made Perfect
Knowledge
Last Night As I Lay Gazing With Shut Eyes
Life
Life Is A Summer's Day
Love
Loves Farewell
Man Man Is The Devil
Manhood
May Morning
Methinks That By A Strict Behavior
The Moon
The Moon Moves Up Her Smooth And Sheeny Path
The Moon Now Rises To Her Absolute Rule
Morning
The Mountains In The Horizon
Music
My Boots
My Friends, My Noble Friends, Know Ye
My Friends, Why Should We Live?
My Ground Is High
My Life
My Prayer
Nature
The Needles Of The Pine
Noon
Not Unconcerned Wachusett Rears His Head
The Offer
The Old Marlborough Road
Old Meeting-house Bell
On Fields Oer Which The Reaper's Hand Has Passed
On Ponkawtasset, Since, We Took Our Way
On Shoulders Whirled In Some Eccentric Orbit
On The Sun Coming Out In The Afternoon
Only The Slave Knows Of The Slave
Our Country
The Peal Of The Bells
Pens To Mend, And Hands To Guide
The Poet's Delay
Poverty
Pray To What Earth Does This Sweet Cold Thing Belong
The Rabbit Leaps
The Respectable Folks
The Rosa Sanguinea
Rumors From An Aeolian Harp
Salmon Brook
The Shrike
Sic Vita
Smoke
Smoke In Winter
Sometimes I Hear The Veery's Clarion
The Soul's Season
Stanzas
Strange That So Many Fickle Gods, As Fickle As The Weather
Such Near Aspects Had We
Such Water Do The Gods Distill
The Summer Rain
Sympathy
Tall Ambrosia
Tell Me Ye Wise Ones If Ye Can
That Phaeton Of Our Day
The Thaw
Then Spend An Age In Whetting Thy Desire
They Who Prepare My Evening Meal Below
Thou Dusky Spirit Of The Wood
'tis Very Fit The Ambrosia Of The Gods
To A Marsh Hawk In Spring
To A Stray Fowl
To Day I Climbed A Handsome Rounded Hill
To Edith
To The Comet
To The Maiden In The East
To The Mountains
Travelling
True Kindness Is A Pure Divine Affinity
Truth -- Goodness -- Beauty -- Those Celestial Thrins
'twas 30 Years Ago
'twill Soon Appear If We But Look
Until At Length The North Winds Blow
The Vireo
Voyagers Song
Wait Not Till I Invite Thee, But Observe
Wait Not Till Slaves Pronounce The Word
Walden
We See The Planet Fall
We Should Not Mind If On Our Ear There Fell
What's The Railroad To Me?
When Breathless Noon Hath Paused On Hill And Vale
When In Some Cove I Lie
When The Toads Begin To Ring
When With Pale Cheek And Sunken Eye I Sang
Where I Have Been
Where'er Thou Sail'st Who Sailed With Me
Who Equallest The Coward's Haste
Who Hears The Parson
Who Sleeps By Day And Walks By Night
Why Toll The Bell Today
Winter Memories
Ye Who Do Command Me To All Virtue Ever
Yet Let Us Thank The Purblind Race
You Boston Folks & Roxbury People
You Must Not Only Aim Aright
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

From the Publisher

Henry David Thoreau crafted essays that reflect his speculative and probing cast of mind. In his poems, he gave voice to his private sentiments and spiritual aspirations in the plain style of New England speech. Now, The Library of America brings together these indispensable works in one authoritative volume. The 27 essays gathered here range over all of Thoreau's concerns, from natural and literary history to the struggle against slavery, and include such masterpieces as "Civil Disobedience," his great exploration of the conflict between individual conscience and state power; "Walking," a meditation on wilderness and civilization; and "Life Without Principle," a passionate critique of American materialism and conformity. The poems collected here, some for the first time, are presented in versions often taken from Thoreau's journal and manuscripts. They reveal him as a poet whose mercurial visions are often expressed with rare precision and immediacy.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 703 pages
• Publisher: Library of America (April 19, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1883011957
• ISBN-13: 978-1883011956
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #286,965 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A treasure., December 1, 2002

By 

Themis-Athena (from somewhere between California and Germany) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Henry David Thoreau : Collected Essays and Poems (Library of America) (Hardcover)

Henry David Thoreau, born in Concord, Massachusetts, on July 12, 1817, was one of the co-founders and most influential representatives of the philosophical school known as "Transcendentalism." (Others include fellow Concord residents Ralph Waldo Emerson and Bronson Alcott, reformist teacher and father of Louisa May Alcott.) Thoreau's life centered around his home town; yet, as his writings reflect, he was very familiar with all major philosophical schools of his time, not only those developing in America but also the writings of Kant, Goethe, Schiller and Hegel - indeed, the very term "transcendentalist" derives, as Emerson explained, from Kant, who had first recognized intuitive thought as a kind of thought in its own right, holding "that there was a very important class of ideas ... which did not come by experience, but through which experience was acquired ... [and which] were intuitions of the mind itself." These were the ideas which Kant had called "transcendental forms." (Or, as Thoreau himself once put it in his Journal: "I should have told them at once that I was a transcendentalist. That would have been the shortest way of telling them that they would not understand my explanations.")

To this day, transcendentalist philosophy, and Thoreau's work in particular, has proven enormously influential - on the program of the British Labour Party as much as on people as diverse as spiritual leaders Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. on the one hand and rock star Don Henley on the other hand. Henley in the 1990s even went so far as to found the Walden Woods Project, teaming up with the Thoreau Society to preserve as much as possible of Walden Woods and the land around Concord, and foster education about Thoreau. Yet, during his life time only few of his many works, now considered so influential, were published, and even those did not find wide distribution. "I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself," he commented on the poor sales of his "Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers."

This collection, one of two Library of America volumes dedicated to Thoreau's works and edited by renowned Thoreau scholar Elizabeth Hall Witherell, presents the majority of his essays and poems, from well-known works such as "Civil Disobedience," "Life Without Principle" and "Walking" to a large body of lesser known (but just as quotable!) writings and loving observations of nature ("Autumnal Tints," "Wild Apples," "Huckleberries"). A companion volume, edited by Robert F. Sayre, contains Thoreau's four longest publications ("A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers," "The Maine Woods," "Cape Cod" and, of course, "Walden") - thus omitting from the Library of America series only his extensive journals and the posthumously published "Faith in a Seed," a collection of four manuscripts left partially unfinished at Thoreau's death in 1862 and published for the first time in the late 1990s, to much fanfare among Thoreauvians the world over.

Introspective to a fault, the man who once built a cabin on Walden Pond and for over two years lived the life of a hermit, was also a keen observer; of nature as much as of the world surrounding him. The shallowness and greed he saw in so-called "civil" society filled him with skepticism ("intellectual and moral suicide," he scoffed in "Life Without Principle") - and with the tireless need to encourage free thinking and personal independence. "I wish to speak a word for Nature," he thus opened his essay on "Walking," and explained that he sought to make a point in favor of "absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil, - to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society." And he went on to mourn the fact that few people were truly able to walk and travel freely, to leave behind the social bounds that tied them down, and to open up to nature's beauty. This, of course, echoed his famous statements in "Walden" that "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation;" that however, as he had learned by his "experiment" on Walden Pond, "if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." And this was the same spirit who, staunchly opposed to both slavery and to the Mexican War, would rather spend a night in jail than pay his taxes, and who summed up his posture in "Civil Disobedience" by saying that "I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right" - a statement echoed roughly a hundred years later when Mahatma Gandhi told an English court that he believed that "non-cooperation with evil is a duty and British rule of India is evil," and also resonating through the publications of many an American civil rights leader, first and foremost Martin Luther King Jr.

While I had read much of Thoreau's work already before I discovered the Library of America collections, I am extremely pleased to see the majority of his body of work reunited in two volumes in this dignified series. For one thing, while there are innumerable compilations containing "Walden" and some of his other better-known works, it is still difficult to get a hold of Thoreau's lesser known essays and poems. Moreover, though, and more importantly, reading his works in the context provided by this collection makes for much greater insight into the man's personality, and his philosophy as a whole. While a biography certainly adds perspective, nothing surpasses the experience of reading Thoreau's works in context - and in the context of the works of other Transcendentalists, first and foremost Emerson. This is a true literary treasure: to behold, cherish and read again and again.

Also recommended:
Henry David Thoreau : A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers / Walden; Or, Life in the Woods / The Maine Woods / Cape Cod (Library of America)
Essays and Lectures: Nature: Addresses and Lectures / Essays: First and Second Series / Representative Men / English Traits / The Conduct of Life (Library of America)

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An American Original, June 4, 2001

By 

Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Henry David Thoreau : Collected Essays and Poems (Library of America) (Hardcover)

....When beginning to read this anthology, I was already familiar with most of his essays but had had only limited exposure to his poems which comprise about a third of this volume’s contents. Thoreau was a man of great intellectual courage while possessing at the same time an uncommon sensitivity to the natural world in which he seemed to be most comfortable. Within the context of American society during the mid-19th century, it is interesting to observe his development of concepts such as civil disobedience which later had such a profound influence on the thinking of public leaders such as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. I have always admired the rigor of Thoreau’s intellect which is evident in abundance throughout his published works. While proceeding through this single volume in which most of his essays and his poems are arranged in sequence, I developed a much greater appreciation of (for lack of a better term) his “humanity.” Those who desire a wider and deeper context for consideration of these works are urged to read Walter Harding's The Days of Henry Thoreau as well as Robert D. Richardson’s two biographies, Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind and Emerson: The Mind on Fire.

14 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ...could be worth it, March 7, 2002

By 

"publicvoice" (Eugene, OR United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Henry David Thoreau : Collected Essays and Poems (Library of America) (Hardcover)

This is a very fine collection of Essays and Poems but a bit pricey. I have to think that Thoreau would not have approved. Go to the library and paw through some of the essays
to see if you want the ones that you cannot get through another
collection. Frequently "Walking" or "Civil Disobedience" or
"Life Without Principle" are added to small volumes of Walden.
I, of course, shelled out the cash and bought it, but I
sometimes have second thoughts. The paper is quite thin and
I have doubts about it's durablity. If you intend to read this
work several times while underlining and making notes, I would look aroung before buying this specific volume. If you merely want a presentable copy to sit on the shelves and only occasionally consulted, but otherwise dormant-than this is for you.
As a side note, Thoreau demonstrates that some mediums are
better for others. Although a master prose essay writer( I see
"Walden" a a collection of discrete, connected essays) his
poetry isn't so great. This is not uncommon, although a great
prose-poet, Nietzsche's straight poetry is very weak.
Essentially, the material inside this volume is worth your
money. This volume itself may not satisfy your needs though.
Go to a university library, read through the essays, and decide
how important ownership is for you. Thoreau would have approved
of such an investigation.