Autograph Manuscript, on Walking, Private Property and Public Spaces [in:] The Writings in Twenty Volumes

Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1906. Manuscript Edition. No. 334 of 600 sets with an inserted leaf of autograph manuscript. Manuscript: 51 lines in ink and pencil, approx. 400 words, recto and verso of a single leaf, inserted before the frontispiece. With 3 portraits of Thoreau, map of Concord and environs, numerous full-page photogravure plates after photos by Herbert W. Gleason. 20 vols. 8vo. Manuscript Edition. No. 334 of 600 sets with an inserted leaf of autograph manuscript. Manuscript: 51 lines in ink and pencil, approx. 400 words, recto and verso of a single leaf, inserted before the frontispiece. With 3 portraits of Thoreau, map of Concord and environs, numerous full-page photogravure plates after photos by Herbert W. Gleason. 20 vols. 8vo. Thoreau’s Transcendental essay ‘Walking’ is “generally seen as a significant turning point in Thoreau’s life, since a handwritten comment on the [original] manuscript notes ‘I regard this as a sort of introduction to all that I may write hereafter.’” (Menard, Learning from Thoreau, p51)
First given as a lecture On April 23, 1851 at the Concord Lyceum, ‘Walking’ laid the foundation for Walden and it was written while Thoreau was in the midst of writing the book:
It was the “opening salvo of the modern American conservation movement. Equating sauntering with absolute freedom, Thoreau, whose Walden would be published three years later, ended his oration with eight words that in coming decades helped save the Maine woods, Cape Cod, Yosemite and other treasured American landscapes: ‘In wildness is the preservation of the world.’ The sentiment became popularized when The Atlantic published Thoreau’s essay ‘Walking’ in May 1862, with the line as the centerpiece, a month after his death.” (Douglas Brinkley)
The present manuscript offers choice content, not found in the published essay, with Thoreau writing “Exclusiveness is but another name for narrow men” ; “What you own owns you. If you build a home it will limit [‘confine’] you more than it will your neighbors” ; “In a true topography – where are we?” while then writing of “the eye of the seer” and making further intriguing observations. Of the manuscript’s approximate 400 words, 2430 words comprise unpublished content.
A significant manuscript from this influential essay that “extolled the virtues of immersing oneself in nature and lamented the inevitable encroachment of private ownership upon the wilderness.” (The Atlantic) Thoreau lectured from “Walking” ten times, more than any other lecture he had given, indicating his own thoughts of its importance. For the Manuscript Edition: BAL 20145. Allen p. 52; Borst B3 (Inventory #: 352079)