THOREAU, HENRY DAVID
Walden; or, Life in the Woods. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1854. First edition, one of 2000 copies printed. Publisher's blind-stamped brown cloth with gilt lettering to spine, housed in a cloth chemise and slipcase. 7 1/4 x 4 1/2 inches (18.5 x 11 cm); 357 pp., inserted map with faint imprint, 8 pp. publisher's ads at rear dated May 1854. A fine copy overall, the cloth lightly rubbed with a few dark spots to covers and a small bump to the top edge of the rear cover, a faint pencil signature "JB Keyes" to the front blank, a very short marginal tear to the margin of page 275, the front free endpaper with a small contemporary Concord bookseller label and the large bookplate of Richard Bayard Dominick recently tipped back onto the endpaper covers a similarly sized adhesive stain.

A fine, unrestored, copy of the first edition of Henry David Thoreau's Walden. The book has been "for almost a hundred years an inspiration to nature-lovers, to philosophers, to sociologists ... and to persons who love to read the English language written with clarity" (Grolier American). While BAL gives no priority to the date of the inserted ads, this copy has ads dated from May 1854, preceding the publication of the book that August. Within the chemise present here, former owner Richard Bayard Dominick, a noted naturalist and lepidopterist, has affixed two leaves collected at Walden Pond and provided descriptions dated 1960. BAL 20106; Grolier American 63.