THE WRITINGS OF HENRY DAVID THOREAU [WORKS] with a leaf of manuscript by THOREAU, Henry David - 1906

Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1906. Manuscript Edition. Hardcover. Small tape repair at the center crease of the manuscript. Fine with a handsome appearance on the shelf. Large octavo (6" x 8-3/4"), 20 volumes bound in 20th-century red crushed levant morocco leather, spines in 6 compartments with 5 raised bands, gilt-lettered in 2, the rest with gilt acorn tools, all edges gilt. Illustrated with 3 portraits and 101 gravures after photographs by Herbert Gleason. BAL 20145. Of 600 numbered sets SIGNED by the publisher, this set is not numbered but rather marked "Publisher's Copy" with an inlaid leaf of Thoreau's original holograph manuscript from CAPE COD, unsigned and written on both sides of the sheet containing 29-lines of text, with corrections and emendations in pencil, some 350 words in Thoreau's hand. The passage--which differs from the published version--is from Chapter Six ("The Beach Again"). It begins, "there was one vessel, a bark, standing down parallel with the coast, which suddenly furled her sails and came to anchor.... Two men came running from the bank, where no human beings had appeared before, as if they had come out of the sand in order to save it before the next wave took it...." Much more. Thoreau manuscript material is increasingly scarce and more expensive to obtain, nearly always being found as it is here, bound into the Manuscript Edition.

This edition marks the first printing of Thoreau's entire Journal.