Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1866. First edition. Bound in publisher's original purple cloth, stamped in blind on the front board and gilt titles on the spine. BAL 20117. One of 1546 copies. A copy that would be Near Fine, but for a strip on the title page that has offset to the adjacent leaf. Spine a bit faded, otherwise an excellent copy overall.

After Henry David Thoreau's 1862 death, the Boston publishers Ticknor and Fields, who had published Walden, gathered together and published a collection of Thoreau's essays. The majority of the essays in A Yankee in Canada outline Thoreau's commitment to social reform, especially Thoreau's abolitionist work. Slavery in Massachusetts as well as A Plea for Captain John Brown appear here. But the most famous and influential of Thoreau's essays included in this title is Civil Disobedience. This landmark essay was previously published with the title Resistance to Civil Government in Elizabeth Peabody's Aesthetic Papers, but it appears in the present volume with the title that encapsulates one of its central arguments: how civil disobedience can be a just response to governmental tyranny. An important collection of influential essays from a profound American thinker. Very Good + (Item #5898)