The complete online text of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers by Henry David Thoreau.

In his own day, Henry David Thoreau was little known outside his hometown of Concord, Massachusetts, where he was much admired for his passionate stance on social issues, his deep knowledge of natural history, and the originality of his lectures, essays,...

Generally unrecognized in his own day or, worse, dismissed as a second-rate imitator of his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, in the twentieth century, has emerged as one of America's greatest literary figures. Walden; Or, Life...

Generally unrecognized in his own day or, worse, dismissed as a second-rate imitator of his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, in the twentieth century, has emerged as one of America's greatest literary figures. Walden, his accou...

PENACOOK - The fallen leaves crunched underfoot as Joyce Read headed toward the river. The water was low and placid in the early evening chill and she spoke of the Merrimack as if it were an old friend. She twisted her face and...

A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS. Henry David Thoreau. 1849/2001. Read by Patrick Cullen. 10-1.5 hour tapes. Blackstone Audio. #2770. 0-7861-2000-2. $69.95. Vinyl; content, author notes. SA Published at the author's expense and not very successful during his lifetime, Thoreau's...

In the following excerpt, Johnson relates the troubled ten‐year history of A Week, from the river trip to initial publication.

In the following excerpt, Garber argues that Thoreau inserted the Saddleback Mountain climbing episode in order to show the insufficiency of textual and temporal closures.

In the following excerpt, Buell traces the course of A Week and explains how it displays, through “endless suggestiveness,” the Transcendentalist sensibility.