1899 Rare Edition - Walden; or, Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau

An attractive turn-of-the-century edition of Thoreau’s enduring American classic, preserved in its wonderfully decorative Henry Altemus pictorial binding with portrait frontispiece and elegant Art Nouveau-style ornamentation.

Author: THOREAU, Henry David.
Title: Walden; or, Life in the Woods.
Publisher: Philadelphia, Henry Altemus Company, [c. 1899].
Edition: Early Henry Altemus Company edition. The portrait frontispiece is copyrighted 1899 by Henry Altemus.
Language: Text in English.
Pages: 375 pages.
Size: 6.5" x 4.5".
Binding: Attractive and very good original publisher’s pictorial full-cloth binding, with a large colour landscape onlay to the front board surrounded by elaborate gilt and blue decorative floral ornamentation; gilt and decorative designs to the spine. Light rubbing, minor wear to the spine extremities and a few small marks, as shown. Hinges fine and binding firm. Decorative pale-green endpapers. Protected in a removable mylar cover. 
Content: Very good content, bright, clean and tight overall, with light age-toning and only occasional minor spotting or marks consistent with age, as shown.
Illustrations: Illustrated with a portrait frontispiece of Henry David Thoreau, together with an attractive title page printed in red and green and decorative patterned endpapers.

Estimate: USD 175–200.

The book:
A particularly attractive early twentieth-century edition of Walden; or, Life in the Woods, Henry David Thoreau’s great meditation on simplicity, nature, self-reliance and the examined life. First published in 1854, the work grew out of the two years, two months and two days Thoreau spent living in a cabin he built near Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. Its chapters include Economy, Where I Lived, and What I Lived For, Reading, Solitude, The Ponds, Higher Laws, Spring and the celebrated Conclusion.

This Henry Altemus edition is especially appealing for its decorative publisher’s binding, combining a pastoral colour onlay with Art Nouveau-inspired gilt ornamentation, plus a portrait frontispiece and two-colour title page. An appealing collectible edition of one of the foundational works of American literature and transcendentalist thought.

The author:
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) was an American essayist, naturalist, philosopher and leading figure of the Transcendentalist movement. A close associate of Ralph Waldo Emerson, he advocated individual conscience, simplicity of living and a profound attentiveness to the natural world.

His best-known works, Walden and the essay commonly known as Civil Disobedience, have had an extraordinary influence on literature, environmental thought, political philosophy and movements of nonviolent resistance. Walden remains his defining work and one of the most widely read American books of the nineteenth century.