Thoreau's Maine Woods - an annotated edition


The Maine Woods Henry D. Thoreau, 1864 - an annotated edition Thoreau Reader: Home

The Maine Woods was written as three essays. If he had lived longer, Thoreau might have revised them into a more cohesive whole, but he never had the time to do this. The book describes trips over an eleven year period, and Thoreau's work on these essays spanned 15 years.

Ktaadn:	One - Two - Three - Four - Five - Six
Chesuncook:	One - Two - Three - Four - Five - Six
Allegash & East Branch:	One - Two - Three - Four - Five - Six
	Seven - Eight - Nine - Ten

A best smeller...

"One of the most coniferous-pungent books in the English language, a book which a century later remains one of the the best written on the woods of Maine." - Mary P. Sherwood

"An effective bosky and moosey picture of the deepest wilderness Thoreau was ever to explore. If Cape Cod tastes of salt, The Maine Woods smells of hemlock and balsam." - Walter Harding

More on The Maine Woods...

Thoreau’s Maine: “A Still More Perfect and Glorious State” - by Daniel S. Malachuk
The "Domestic Air" of Wilderness: Thoreau & Joe Polis in the Maine Woods - Thomas P. Lynch
"A Sylvan Appearance": Woodplay in The Maine Words - from Randall Conrad
What did they think of this in 1864? - two contemporay reviews
More on Joe Polis, Thoreau's Allegash & East Branch Penobscot guide
A map by Tom Funk shows Thoreau's Maine Expeditions of 1846 & 1857
Outfit for an Excursion - what Henry recommends for you, a companion, and an Indian - part of Thoreau's Maine Woods Appendix, with plant and animal lists, and Indian words

More information: other Maine Woods pages

"The Maine Woods is one of the earliest and most detailed accounts of the process of change in the American hinterland. Thoreau showed us how to write about nature; how to know more; how to observe, even how to live .... In this book he illustrates the powerful lesson of the truthfulness of dogged observation: that when the truth is told, the text is prophetic." - Paul Theroux, from his Maine Woods introduction

John Muir took a copy of The Maine Woods with him on his 1879 trip to Alaska.

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