A Week

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Concord River at the site of the Old North Bridge

“It required some rudeness to disturb with our boat the mirror-like surface of the water, in which every twig and blade of grass was so faithfully reflected… 

On this date in history:

“At length, on Saturday, the last day of August 1839, we two, brothers, and natives of Concord, weighed anchor in this river port; for Concord, too, lies under the sun, a port of entry and departure for the bodies as well as the souls of men; one shore at least exempted from all duties but such as an honest man will gladly discharge,” writes Henry David Thoreau to begin his book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. 

It was his first of only two books published in his lifetime (the other being Walden). 


Originally self-published, A Week... was considered a failure at the time. Over 700 of the 1,000 copies printed were returned to Thoreau unsold. 

The framework of the book follows a seven-day boat trip Henry David took with his brother John (the actual trip took 13 days). Today, it’s considered a bit of a mishmash: a travelogue, a collection of philosophic musings, bits of poetry, passages of poetic prose, pastoral descriptions of a lost America, the forerunner to many such books that followed. It's also a tribute to his late brother John who died shortly after the trip was made.

But suffice it to say, reprinted after his death as his reputation began to grow, A Week is still in print, and still has wonderful passages from Thoreau, the poet naturalist. 

“The stillness was intense and almost conscious, as if it were a natural Sabbath. The air was so elastic and crystalline that it had the same effect on the landscape that a glass has on a picture, to give it an ideal remoteness and perfection.”

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