J. Lyndon Shanley – författare

Thoreau's Walden, ostensibly a simple account of a year spent alone in a cabin by a pond in the woods, is one of the most influential and complex books in American literature. After eight years in the writing,the first edition of 1854 was largely ignored, and it was not reprinted until 1862, the year of Thoreau's death. But by 1900 Walden was acclaimed by many as a classic, among the finest prose works of the century. It has been increasingly recognized as an important document of social criticism and dissent. It has been seen as a religious testament, with a kinship to oriental mysticism. It has been described as a mythic book,and it has been used as a Freudian key to the mind of its iconoclastic author. Thoreau's words have become increasingly significant in modern times. Anticipating the evils of modern society and the problems of modern man, Walden's meanings seem more relevant every day.

One of the most influential and compelling books in American literature, Walden is a vivid account of the years that Henry D. Thoreau spent alone in a secluded cabin at Walden Pond. This edition--introduced by noted American writer John Updike--celebrates the perennial importance of a classic work, originally published in 1854. Much of Walden's material is derived from Thoreau's journals and contains such engaging pieces from the lively "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For" and "Brute Neighbors" to the serene "Reading" and "The Pond in the Winter." Other famous sections involve Thoreau's visits with a Canadian woodcutter and with an Irish family, a trip to Concord, and a description of his bean field. This is the complete and authoritative text of Walden--as close to Thoreau's original intention as all available evidence allows. This is the authoritative text of Walden and the ideal presentation of Thoreau's great document of social criticism and dissent.

This illustrated edition of Walden features 66 photographs by Herbert W. Gleason, one of the great American landscape photographers of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Gleason, who had a special love for what he called "the simple beauty of New England," became interested in Thoreau's work when commissioned in 1906 by the Houghton Mifflin Company to illustrate their edition of The Writings of Henry David Thoreau. With the help of the few surviving people who had known Thoreau, Gleason searched out the exact places Thoreau had described--all of them still looking much as they had when Thoreau knew them--and photographed them. Gleason became so interested in the project that he continued to photograph Thoreau country for more than forty years. Most of the photographs reproduced here were chosen by Gleason himself for an edition of Walden he planned but never published. Originally published in 1973. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press.These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.