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1886 Rare First UK Edition - Walden by Henry David Thoreau
1886 Rare First UK Edition - Walden by Henry David Thoreau
1886 Rare First UK Edition - Walden by Henry David Thoreau
1886 Rare First UK Edition - Walden by Henry David Thoreau
1886 Rare First UK Edition - Walden by Henry David Thoreau
1886 Rare First UK Edition - Walden by Henry David Thoreau
1886 Rare First UK Edition - Walden by Henry David Thoreau
1886 Rare First UK Edition - Walden by Henry David Thoreau
1886 Rare First UK Edition - Walden by Henry David Thoreau
1886 Rare First UK Edition - Walden by Henry David Thoreau
1886 Rare First UK Edition - Walden by Henry David Thoreau
1886 Rare First UK Edition - Walden by Henry David Thoreau
1886 Rare First UK Edition - Walden by Henry David Thoreau
1886 Rare First UK Edition - Walden by Henry David Thoreau
1886 Rare First UK Edition - Walden by Henry David Thoreau
1886 Rare First UK Edition - Walden by Henry David Thoreau
1886 Rare First UK Edition - Walden by Henry David Thoreau
1886 Rare First UK Edition - Walden by Henry David Thoreau
1886 Rare First UK Edition - Walden by Henry David Thoreau
1886 Rare First UK Edition - Walden by Henry David Thoreau
1886 Rare First UK Edition - Walden by Henry David Thoreau
1886 Rare First UK Edition - Walden by Henry David Thoreau
1886 Rare First UK Edition - Walden by Henry David Thoreau
1886 Rare First UK Edition - Walden by Henry David Thoreau
1886 Rare First UK Edition - Walden by Henry David Thoreau

1886 Rare First UK Edition - Walden by Henry David Thoreau

$250 USD - $250 USD
$250 USD
$250 USD - $250 USD
$250 USD

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First UK Edition of Thoreau’s Walden, published in London in 1886 as part of the Camelot Classics series, retaining its original blue cloth and remarkably well-preserved printed spine label.

Author: Henry David Thoreau; Will H. Dircks (introductory note).
Title: Walden.
Publisher: London: Walter Scott, 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row, 1886.
Edition: First UK Edition. The Camelot Classics, edited by Ernest Rhys, with an introductory note by Will H. Dircks.
Language: English.
Pages: xxviii, 336 pages + publisher’s catalogue.
Size: 7 x 5 inches.
Binding: Very good original blue cloth binding with printed paper title label to spine (light general wear, rubbing and minor marks to cloth, slight wear at spine ends and corners; spine label unusually complete and clearly legible, as shown). Protected in a removable mylar cover. 
Content: Very good content (complete, with foxing and occasional staining, more noticeable on the endpapers and scattered through the text, as shown). Untrimmed fore and lower edges.
Illustrations: Decorative floral headpieces, tailpieces and ornamental initial letters throughout.

Estimate: USD 300–400.

The book:
First published in Boston in 1854, Walden grew from the little more than two years Thoreau spent living in a cabin he built near Walden Pond at Concord, Massachusetts. Part memoir, part philosophical meditation and part critique of material society, it became one of the defining works of American transcendentalism and one of the most enduring books written about simplicity, self-reliance, nature and deliberate living.

This 1886 Walter Scott edition is the First UK Edition of Walden. Issued in Ernest Rhys’s Camelot Classics series, it includes a substantial introductory note by Will H. Dircks, decorative ornaments throughout, and an appendix containing an excerpt from A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers together with several poems. An appealing and increasingly collectible early British edition of one of the foundational works of American literature.

The author:
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) was an American writer, naturalist and philosopher closely associated with the transcendentalist movement centred around Concord, Massachusetts. A contemporary and friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson, he combined close observation of nature with an independent philosophy centred on simplicity, personal conscience and resistance to social conformity.

Thoreau’s influence extends far beyond nature writing. Alongside Walden, his essay Civil Disobedience became one of his most influential works, shaping later discussions of individual conscience, government authority and nonviolent resistance.