The Mellon Family Copy of the First Printing of Thoreau's First Book
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack.
Boston and Cambridge: James Munroe and Company, 1849.
Price:
$15,000.00
First edition, first printing, first issue of the author’s first book. 1 vols. 8vo. Publisher’s original brown cloth, blind-embossed on boards, stamped in gilt on spine; head of spine very slightly bumped, as are corners; small areas of wear to spine edges; small stain to lower right edge of front; unusually fresh and clean internally; some minor foxing, with small hole at bottom of p. 205, not affecting text; one-page advertisement for Walden at rear. In custom chocolate brown levant morocco solander case with gilt spine by Bennett, NY. BAL 20104; Borst A1.1.a1; Johnson, High Spots 73.
Item #377810
Among the most famous publishing flops in the history of American literature.
One thousand sets of sheets of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers were printed at Thoreau’s expense in 1849, but the book did not sell well: Munroe sold just 219 copies, while 75 were given away. Thus, on October 28, 1853, the 706 remaining copies were sent back to Thoreau, “to spend the next nine years in his attic bedroom, with [him] occasionally selling copies or distributing them to friends” (Borst), and causing the author to comment, “I now have a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself.”
In 1862, Ticknor and Fields bought 145 bound copies and 450 unbound copies directly from Thoreau for 40 cents apiece, printed and inserted a new title page, and re-issued them.
Provenance: John C. Law & Co. of Lawrence, MA (blind stamp top right corner of first free endpaper); Benjamin Coolidge, a civil engineer from Lawrence, MA (signed and dated May 27, 1864, at the top right corner of first free endpaper; Mary Mellon (d. 1946), first wife of Paul Mellon (leather bookplate "Oak Spring / Mary Mellon" on first pastedown endpaper); then by descent through the Mellon family.
Item #377810
Among the most famous publishing flops in the history of American literature.
One thousand sets of sheets of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers were printed at Thoreau’s expense in 1849, but the book did not sell well: Munroe sold just 219 copies, while 75 were given away. Thus, on October 28, 1853, the 706 remaining copies were sent back to Thoreau, “to spend the next nine years in his attic bedroom, with [him] occasionally selling copies or distributing them to friends” (Borst), and causing the author to comment, “I now have a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself.”
In 1862, Ticknor and Fields bought 145 bound copies and 450 unbound copies directly from Thoreau for 40 cents apiece, printed and inserted a new title page, and re-issued them.
Provenance: John C. Law & Co. of Lawrence, MA (blind stamp top right corner of first free endpaper); Benjamin Coolidge, a civil engineer from Lawrence, MA (signed and dated May 27, 1864, at the top right corner of first free endpaper; Mary Mellon (d. 1946), first wife of Paul Mellon (leather bookplate "Oak Spring / Mary Mellon" on first pastedown endpaper); then by descent through the Mellon family.
