THOREAU, HENRY DAVID Autograph manuscript, a leaf of the working draft of Walden (Boston, 1854). 1 1/4 pages, 4to, in brown ink on both sides of a sheet of gray paper, 252 x 202 mm. (9 7/8 x 8 15/16 in.), left-hand margin irregularly torn with loss of a few letters, inlaid, paginated "87" in pencil in upper right corner, some pencilled algebraic notations (? by Thoreau) on verso, with portrait in brown half morocco folding case. THOREAU ON FISHING The manuscript leaf, which contains three paragraphs, begins: "I trust he does not hear this:--," and continues in the third paragraph: "I find continually that I cannot fish without falling a little in my own respect. I have tried it again [and] again. I have skill at it--a certain [i]nstinct for it which revives from time to time, [but] always when I have done--I feel that it would have been better if I had not fished. I think I am not mistaken. It is a faint intimation--yet so are the first streaks of morning..." This text closely resembles the published form (which appears on p. 236 of Walden , Volume 2 of the Manuscript Edition of The Writing of Henry David Thoreau , Boston, 1906). "Instead of compiling a large and amorphous draft [as he did for A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)], for Walden [Thoreau] eventually wrote a series of drafts, each one overlapping, but not duplicating, its predecessors and extending the book's dimensions...The early drafts (1846-1849) coincide with his writing of A Week ; thus, some of the notebooks and lecture fragments contain interchangeable portions of the two texts. Not until 1852 did Walden begin to acquire its distinctive character..." (William L. Howarth in The Writings of...Thoreau , Princeton, 1971, vol. 5, p. 184). Portions of the manuscript of Walden are very rare on the market.
THOREAU, HENRY DAVID Autograph manuscript, a leaf of the working draft of Walden (Boston, 1854). 1 1/4 pages, 4to, in brown ink on both sides of a sheet of gray paper, 252 x 202 mm. (9 7/8 x 8 15/16 in.), left-hand margin irregularly torn with loss of a few letters, inlaid, paginated "87" in pencil in upper right corner, some pencilled algebraic notations (? by Thoreau) on verso, with portrait in brown half morocco folding case. THOREAU ON FISHING The manuscript leaf, which contains three paragraphs, begins: "I trust he does not hear this:--," and continues in the third paragraph: "I find continually that I cannot fish without falling a little in my own respect. I have tried it again [and] again. I have skill at it--a certain [i]nstinct for it which revives from time to time, [but] always when I have done--I feel that it would have been better if I had not fished. I think I am not mistaken. It is a faint intimation--yet so are the first streaks of morning..." This text closely resembles the published form (which appears on p. 236 of Walden , Volume 2 of the Manuscript Edition of The Writing of Henry David Thoreau , Boston, 1906). "Instead of compiling a large and amorphous draft [as he did for A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)], for Walden [Thoreau] eventually wrote a series of drafts, each one overlapping, but not duplicating, its predecessors and extending the book's dimensions...The early drafts (1846-1849) coincide with his writing of A Week ; thus, some of the notebooks and lecture fragments contain interchangeable portions of the two texts. Not until 1852 did Walden begin to acquire its distinctive character..." (William L. Howarth in The Writings of...Thoreau , Princeton, 1971, vol. 5, p. 184). Portions of the manuscript of Walden are very rare on the market.
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.jpg "Source: Christie's")
.jpg "Source: Christie's")
