![THOREAU, Henry David (1817-1862). Autograph manuscript, a working draft from chapter III, "Reading," of Walden, published in Boston in 1854, [Concord, MA, c.1849].](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2018/NYR/2018_NYR_16392_0169_001(thoreau_henry_david_autograph_manuscript_a_working_draft_from_chapter013508).jpg?w=1)
![THOREAU, Henry David (1817-1862). Autograph manuscript, a working draft from chapter III, "Reading," of Walden, published in Boston in 1854, [Concord, MA, c.1849].](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2018/NYR/2018_NYR_16392_0169_000(thoreau_henry_david_autograph_manuscript_a_working_draft_from_chapter013459).jpg?w=1)
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THOREAU, Henry David (1817-1862). Autograph manuscript, a working draft from chapter III, "Reading," of Walden, published in Boston in 1854, [Concord, MA, c.1849].
Two pages on a single leaf, 248 x 190mm, in brown ink, several autograph corrections and insertions in pencil (laid into larger sheet, last line on recto trimmed affecting three words). Bound into the first volume of: The Writings of Henry David Thoreau. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906. Manuscript edition, limited to 600 sets. 20 volumes, octavo. (Partially unopened.) Original cloth (sunned and worn, vol 1 cover starting). The published version of the present manuscript is on page 113 of volume 2.
On the nobility of the written word: an outstanding leaf from the original, working manuscript of Thoreau’s Walden. Only a handful of leaves from Walden—this quintessential American classic—remain in private hands. Even though Thoreau generated at least seven separate drafts over a period of nine years, portions of the manuscript of Walden are very rare on the market. Most of the manuscript is at the Huntington Library where it is on permanent view in the Library Exhibition Hall. A small handful of leaves were bound into sets of the Thoreau Manuscript Edition, as here, but this edition much more commonly contains leaves from other works. William L. Howarth, The Literary Manuscripts of Henry David Thoreau (1974), located 18 Walden leaves in permanent institutional collections. The present leaf is newly rediscovered.
This manuscript passage is from chapter three, “Reading,” in which Thoreau delineates the vital importance of deliberative reading: "Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written" (line one). He specifies the superiority of the written over the spoken word in an argument which is timeless. While Thoreau's comparison is between books and the rhetoric of the classical forum, there are clear parallels to both the bombast of newspapermen in his own time and the rhetoric of chat shows and social media in our own time.
It reads in part: “However much we may admire the orator’s occasional bursts of eloquence I think that the noblest written words are commonly as far behind or above the fleeting spoken language, as the firmament with its star is behind the clouds. There are the stars, and they who can may read them. The astronomers forever comment on and observe them. They are not exhortations like our daily colloquies and vaporous breath. What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion & speaks to the mob before him, that is to those who can hear him, but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, who would be distracted by the event & the crowd, speaks to the intellect & heart of mankind—to all in any age who can understand him.” Full transcription available on request. The manuscript aligns closely to the published version, but a few lines about the mother tongue of oratory versus the father tongue of writing are not yet present in this draft.
Two pages on a single leaf, 248 x 190mm, in brown ink, several autograph corrections and insertions in pencil (laid into larger sheet, last line on recto trimmed affecting three words). Bound into the first volume of: The Writings of Henry David Thoreau. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906. Manuscript edition, limited to 600 sets. 20 volumes, octavo. (Partially unopened.) Original cloth (sunned and worn, vol 1 cover starting). The published version of the present manuscript is on page 113 of volume 2.
On the nobility of the written word: an outstanding leaf from the original, working manuscript of Thoreau’s Walden. Only a handful of leaves from Walden—this quintessential American classic—remain in private hands. Even though Thoreau generated at least seven separate drafts over a period of nine years, portions of the manuscript of Walden are very rare on the market. Most of the manuscript is at the Huntington Library where it is on permanent view in the Library Exhibition Hall. A small handful of leaves were bound into sets of the Thoreau Manuscript Edition, as here, but this edition much more commonly contains leaves from other works. William L. Howarth, The Literary Manuscripts of Henry David Thoreau (1974), located 18 Walden leaves in permanent institutional collections. The present leaf is newly rediscovered.
This manuscript passage is from chapter three, “Reading,” in which Thoreau delineates the vital importance of deliberative reading: "Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written" (line one). He specifies the superiority of the written over the spoken word in an argument which is timeless. While Thoreau's comparison is between books and the rhetoric of the classical forum, there are clear parallels to both the bombast of newspapermen in his own time and the rhetoric of chat shows and social media in our own time.
It reads in part: “However much we may admire the orator’s occasional bursts of eloquence I think that the noblest written words are commonly as far behind or above the fleeting spoken language, as the firmament with its star is behind the clouds. There are the stars, and they who can may read them. The astronomers forever comment on and observe them. They are not exhortations like our daily colloquies and vaporous breath. What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion & speaks to the mob before him, that is to those who can hear him, but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, who would be distracted by the event & the crowd, speaks to the intellect & heart of mankind—to all in any age who can understand him.” Full transcription available on request. The manuscript aligns closely to the published version, but a few lines about the mother tongue of oratory versus the father tongue of writing are not yet present in this draft.