[Item #4771] Young Man Thoreau. Richard Lebeaux, Henry David Thoreau.
Young Man Thoreau
Young Man Thoreau
Young Man Thoreau
Young Man Thoreau

Young Man Thoreau

Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1977. First Edition. Hardcover. "The development of Thoreau's identity--from David Henry, son of John and Cynthia, to Henry David, sojourner at Walden, was a long, complex, and painful process; it was by no means a fully self-assured, stately march to the beat of a different drummer. The period between Thoreau's graduation from Harvard in 1837 and the beginning of the Walden experiment in 1845 was a time during which...he was in the process of becoming--and almost 'not becoming'--a "great man" in American literary and cultural history. What can be seen is the fatefully prolonged adolescence and troubled early adulthood of a gifted and sensitive young man: facing dilemmas of identity, vocation, and relation to parents, siblings, and community; searching for models and finding a "great man" to emulate and an ideology to embrace; seeking satisfactory forms of intimacy; engaging in a rivalry with the brother he deeply loved; seeking to establish his own home and become his own man; sensing his potential for greatness and fearing he would never realize that potential...enduring an extended 'winter of discontent' before coming into his own--as a writer and as 'great man'--at Walden Pond and in Walden. The 'inner' man was not identical to the 'outer' man or, for that matter, to the 'larger-than-life' figure who has become such an integral part of our cultural tradition" (from Introduction, pg. iii). The prose of Thoreau—ornate, unapologetically declarative, denoted in part by a bold intellectual brawniness most assume came natively and naturally to the man who wrote "Walden"—masks the much more relatable context in which his own life unfolded. His is a story of human victory over deeply human struggles. The heroic, marbled prose which instructs the reader to "...go confidently in the direction of their dreams," to "...live the life they imagine..." was as much an instruction to himself as a call-to-action for his readers. Lebeaux's "Young Man Thoreau" is an essential addition to the library of all those curious (or, like your Devoted Assistant Curator, wildly enthusiastic) about the life, work, and development of Henry David Thoreau and American Transcendentalism in the 19th Century. [ISBN: 0-87023-231-2]. Hardcover in unclipped dust-jacket; the surprisingly-scarce First Edition of this out-of-print biography. Book in very fine condition with only minute shelf-wear & select, tiny instances of yellowing to/along fine-edges--delightfully clean. Dust-jacket in very fine condition with tiny, select instances of light-to-modest rubbing to front, back covers & spine; esp. nearest fine-edges; similar rubbing and what appears to be faint remnants of blue pen ink near bottommost fine-edge of spine. Very Fine / Fine. [Item #4771]

Price: $65.00