The Essays of Henry D. Thoreau Selected and Edited by Lewis Hyde

Thoreau's major essays annotated and introduced by one of our most vital intellectuals. WithThe Essays of Henry D. Thoreau, Lewis Hyde gathers thirteen of Thoreau's finest short prose works and, for the first time in 150 years, presents them fully annotated and arranged in the order of their composition. This definitive edition includes Thoreau's most famous essays, "Civil Disobedience" and "Walking," along with lesser-known masterpieces such as "Wild Apples," "The Last Days of John Brown," and an account of his 1846 journey into the Maine wilderness to climb Mount Katahdin, an essay that ends on a unique note of sublimity and terror. Hyde diverges from the long-standing and dubious editorial custom of separating Thoreau's politics from his interest in nature, a division that has always obscured the ways in which the two are constantly entwined. "Natural History of Massachusetts" begins not with fish and birds but with a dismissal of the political world, and "Slavery in Massachusetts" ends with a meditation on the water lilies blooming on the Concord River. Thoreau's ideal reader was expected to be well versed in Greek and Latin, poetry and travel narrative, and politically engaged in current affairs. Hyde's detailed annotations clarify many of Thoreau's references and re-create the contemporary context wherein the nation's westward expansion was bringing to a head the racial tensions that would result in the Civil War.

Lewis Hyde is the author of Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, and a book of poems, This Error Is the Sign of Love. He is Thomas Professor of Creative Writing at Kenyon College.

Introduction: Prophetic Excursions
A Note on the Selection
Acknowledgements

The Essays:
"Natural History of Massachusetts"
"A Winter Walk"
"Paradise (to be) Regained"
"Ktaadn"
"Civil Disobedience"
"Walking"
"Slavery in Massachusetts"
"Life Without Principle"
"Autumnal Tints"
"The Succession of Forest Trees"
"A Plea for Captain John Brown"
"The Last Days of John Brown"
"Wild Apples"

Annotations
Bibliography
Index