Get 20% off on pre-owned items, available in store and online. Offer valid May 25-27, 2024. This offer cannot be combined with other discounts or coupons and does not apply to previous purchases. Offer cannot be used to buy gift cards or items labeled as 'New' on HPB.com. Sale prices will be reflected in your cart.
Pickup at HPB West Lane Avenue
Out of stock at HPB West Lane Avenue
Check other stores
New Essays on Walden reviews Thoreau's classic from four important contemporary perspectives. Lawrence Buell explains how decisions by Thoreau's publisher combined with promotion of Thoreau by early Thoreauvians, literary critics and reviewers turned Walden into a classic. Nature writer and ecologist Anne LaBastille writes of her own responses to Walden. H. Daniel Peck examines how the pastoralism of Walden serves to contain not only the forces of industrialism and commerce in American society but also psychic forces in Thoreau's inner life. Finally Michael Fischer reevaluates Walden in the light of modern literary theory, finding that Thoreau's forthrightness in presenting and analyzing his own politics disarms his skeptical critics. In introducing these new essays, Robert F. Sayre provides a masterful short biography of Thoreau, an account of the writing of Walden and a summary of other critical views.