Life Without Principle -- Manuscript

Edité par Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1906

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Vendeur : Blue Sky Rare Books, Palm Springs, CA, Etats-UnisBlue Sky Rare Books

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Etat: Occasion - Bon

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Manuscript leaf (2pp) of Thoreau's most famous essay, Life Without Principle. "Thoreau's best, most concentrated statement of his major message, his equivalent of Emerson's Self-Reliance." (Richardson 333). This is the actual heart of the essay. Thoreau finished the revisions on this leaf very near his death and it is obviously the capstone statement of his thinking. All of the following in Thoreau's hand: "The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself. If you would get money as a writer or lecturer, you must be popular, which is to go down perpendicularly. Those services which the community will most readily pay for, it is the most disagreeable to render. You are paid for being something less than a man. The State does not commonly reward a genius any more wisely. Even the poet laureate would rather not have to celebrate the accidents of royalty. [Paragraph break] As for my own business, even that kind of surveying which I could do with most satisfaction my employers do not want. They would prefer that I should do my work coarsely and not too well, ay, not well enough. [Paragraph break] The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get "a good job," but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it. [Paragraph break] [unpublished section follows] Commonly, if a temple is to be built, the work goes to the lowest bidder. It would be wiser to give it to the highest bidder. The question is not how the work may be well, only cheaply done. [pencil] But the fault is as much with workers as with employers. [paragraph break] [In pencil] If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day and see his fellows [illegible phrase] he is esteemed a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen."The leaf was found in a copy of the Manuscript edition of his collected works. It is in the original paper mount, fresh and beautiful condition (single fold), housed in a heavy solander box -- quarter green morocco over green pasteboard by Gray Parrot. In The Literary Manuscripts of Henry David Thoreau, William Howarth explains that Houghtin Mifflin purchased "bundles of loose manuscripts, already used by printers in making some of Thoreau's earliest volumes." Most of these manuscripts were from the Journal, four volumes of which Houghtin Mifflin had already published in its "seasons" series. Here, instead, there was Thoreau's scorching take on money and work in America. A real treasure. The printed books are available separately as a rebound set.

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Détails bibliographiques

Titre
Life Without Principle -- Manuscript
Auteur
Henry David Thoreau
Éditeur
Houghton Mifflin, Boston
Année de publication
1906
État de l'article
Near Fine
Reliure
Hardcover
Édition
first edition.

Blue Sky Rare Books

Palm Springs, CA, Etats-Unis

Vendeur avec une évaluation de 5 étoiles

Vendeur AbeBooks depuis 30 septembre 2015

Frais d'expédition à l'intérieur de ce pays : Etats-Unis

Article5 à 17 jours ouvrés3 à 10 jours ouvrés
Premier articleEUR 4,74EUR 20,66
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Blue Sky Rare Books

CA, Etats-Unis