Thoreau, Henry D.:

$2,250 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

CAPE COD. First edition, BAL's binding A. One of 2000 copies printed. Thoreau visited Cape Cod four times between 1849 and 1857 and later delivered a series of lectures based on those visits. Edited by his sister Sophia and his friend, the Transcendentalist poet, Ellery Channing (who accompanied Thoreau on his first trip to Cape Cod in 1849), the lectures were published posthumously as Cape Cod in 1865. "Wishing to get a better view than I had yet had of the ocean…but of which a man who lives a few miles inland may never see any trace…I made a visit to Cape Cod in October, 1849," writes Thoreau in the book's opening lines, noting that while he has "been accustomed to make excursions to the ponds within ten miles of Concord...latterly I have extended my excursions to the sea-shore." The "sea-shore," concludes Thoreau later in the book, "is a sort of neutral ground, a most advantageous point from which to contemplate this world." This copy bears the ink ownership signature and date ("April 1865") of Clarence Cook (1828-1900), author and art critic. The book was published in late March. At the time, Cook was contributing a series of articles about American art to the New York Tribune. The ink inscription of "William R. Williams," dated 1869, on the title page, together with another ink inscription signed, "W.R.W.," on the verso of the preliminary blank, details the book's acquisition by its next owner. These inscriptions are likely those of the Baptist minister William R. Willia

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