THE MAINE WOODS. Thoreau, Henry D.:

First edition, first printing of the second of Thoreau's posthumously published books (preceded the year before by the publication of Thoreau's Excursions), edited by his friend and frequent travelling companion, the Transcendentalist poet William Ellery Channing, and by his sister Sophia Thoreau, published by Ticknor and Fields of Boston in 1864. Based on three trips to Maine, The Maine Woods follows Thoreau as he climbs Mount Katahdin with his cousin George Thacher in 1846, takes part in a moose-hunting expedition with Thacher and Indian guide Joe Aitteon in 1853, and travels down the Allagash and Penobscot rivers with fellow Concordian Edward Hoar and Indian guide Joe Polis in 1857. The book consists of three essays "Ktaadn," "Chesuncook," and "The Allegash and East Branch" each corresponding to one of Thoreau's three trips, and includes a seven-part appendix of technical terms with sections dedicated to "Trees," "Flowers and Shrubs," a "List of Plants," a "List of Birds," "Quadrupeds," "Outfit for an Excursion," and "A List of Indian Words." The first two essays "Ktaadn" and "Chesuncook" both appeared during Thoreau's lifetime, the former having been published serially in the Union Magazine of Literature and Art between July and November 1848 and the latter in the Atlantic Monthly between June and August 1858. Like such earlier works as Walden (1854) and A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849), The Maine Woods explores the relationship between man and nature, but unlike in these earlier works, Thoreau here finds nature more inhospitable: "Nature was here something savage and awful, though beautiful." Thoreau is struck by "the continuousness of the forest.It is even more grim and wild than you have anticipated, a damp and intricate wilderness.The aspect of the country, indeed, is universally stern and savage." Thoreau is also concerned in The Maine Woods to explore "the motives which commonly carry men into the wilderness." Reflecting on the "base or coarse" motives which lead the explorer, the hunter, and the lumberman into the woods, Thoreau wonders, "could not one spend some weeks or years in the solitude of this vast wilderness with other employments than these, employments perfectly sweet and innocent and ennobling? For one that comes with a pencil to sketch or sing, a thousand come with an axe or rifle." Thoreau, at one point, even seems to anticipate America's national park system: "The kings of England formerly had their forests 'to hold the king's game,' for sport or food, sometimes destroying villages to create or extend them.Why should not we, who have renounced the king's authority, have our national preserves ?" For Thoreau, the writer and philosopher, the Maine woods serve to "remind us, that, not only for strength, but for beauty, the poet must, from time to time drink at some new and more bracing fountain of the Muses, far in the recesses of the wilderness." Of particular interest are Thoreau's observations on Native Americans. Indeed, The Maine Woods has been described as "a gold mine of Indian lore and terminology" (Harding). As Thoreau himself notes in "Chesuncook," he and his companions engaged the services of an Indian guide "mainly that I might have an opportunity to study his ways." The Appendix features "A List of Indian Words" drawn from the Abenaki language. A first edition, first printing, with the list of Thoreau's books facing the titlepage priced, here with the publisher's catalog, dated April 1864, inserted at rear. The present copy bears the bookplate of Owen Franklin Aldis on the front pastedown and a Yale ex-library bookplate on the rear pastedown. A graduate of Yale, Aldis (1853 1925) practiced law before moving to Chicago where he established a successful real estate firm. He began collecting books in about 1890 with the aid of Boston bookseller P.K. Foley, focusing primarily on first editions of American literature. In 1911, Aldis donated his collection to Yale, where i