THOREAU, Henry David (1817-1862). The Writings. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1906.

20 volumes, 8vo. Numerous engraved hand-colored and tinted plates. Contemporary half green levant gilt, spines in 6 compartments with raised bands, gilt-lettering in 3, others tooled in floral devices, gilt top edges, others uncut.

LIMITED EDITION, number 54 of 600 copies of the "Manuscript Edition." The collected works of Thoreau, a leading transcendentalist of the 19th-century most famous for Walden, a reflection on simple living amidst nature.

[Bound into Volume I:] THOREAU, Henry David. Autograph manuscript. 2 pp., 4to (235 x 191 mm), window-mounted, in ink on paper with some penciled cancelations comprising 55 lines from Chapter 6 ("Walking"), pp. 196-199 in Thoreau's 1863 anthology, Excursions. In part: "...a serpent; and though it may be an unimportant coincidence, it will not be out of place here to state, that a fossil tortoise has lately been discovered in Asia large enough to support an elephant. I confess that I am partial to these wild fancies, which transcend the order of time and development. They are the sublimest recreation of the intellect. The partridge loves peas, but not those that go with her into the pot..."