THE WRITINGS OF HENRY DAVID THOREAU by Thoreau, Henry David - 1906

Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1906. First edition thus, the "Manuscript Edition," This is no. 86 of 600 numbered sets, "signed" by the publisher and with a leaf of autograph manuscript by Thoreau bound in. 8vo. 20 volumes. Illustrated, photographs, plates, some colored, folding map of Concord in the final volume. 40 photographic frontispieces not included in the trade edition, twenty of which are colored; more than 100 photographic illustrations by Herbert W. Gleason. BAL 20145: "This edition contains [Thoreau's] entire Journal [the final 14 volumes of the set], which has only recently become available for publication." The manuscript leaf is a working draft toward the essay "Life Without Principle," later published in "A Yankee in Canada," 57 lines on both sides of a quarto sheet (inlaid and folded in binding), approximately 350 words, with at least three deletions and additions in ink and the entire second page crossed through, in part: "Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven. Yes, every thought that passes through the mind helps to wear and tear it, and to deepen the ruts, which, as in the streets of Pompeii, evince how much it has been used. How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them, had better let their peddling-carts be driven, even at the slowest trot or walk, over that bridge of glorious span by which we trust to pass at last from the farthest brink of time to the nearest shore of eternity!" A substantial portion of this manuscript leaf appears not to have been used in the essay and we have been unable to determine whether it has been published; the finished version includes the manuscript changes as given here. Publisher's deluxe binding (most sets were issued in green buckram), green three-quarter crushed morocco, gilt, marbled boards and endpapers, spine elaborately gilt with title, rules, and floral ornaments between raised bands, t.e.g., other untrimmed, silk ribbon markers. One volume with a small white paint spot on the spine, spines uniformly sunned to a rich brown, a fine set. (2617).