Wild
Fruits : Thoreau's Rediscovered Last Manuscript by Henry
David Thoreau, Bradley P. Dean (Editor), Abigail Rorer (Illustrator)
Henry David Thoreau was 44 years old when he died of
tuberculosis in the early spring of 1862. He had acquired a measure of
notoriety in his lifetime largely for his fervent support of
abolitionism and his refusal to pay taxes to support the American war of
conquest against Mexico, the subject of his widely circulated pamphlet Civil
Disobedience. Closer to his hometown of Concord, Massachusetts,
he was known as something of an eccentric who kept a home in the woods
and took long walks when the citizens of the town were at work or
church.
We scarcely know Thoreau better, writes archivist and
scholar Bradley Dean: we still remember him today for having spent time
in jail and spinning philosophy out of the New England woods. On the
strength of this lost, and now published, final manuscript of Thoreau's,
Dean would have us think of him as a protoecologist, and for very good
reason. In the last years of his life, Thoreau resolved to learn better
the science behind nature, and in Wild Fruits he collected the
lore and facts surrounding the plants around his home, observing such
things as the quantity of chestnuts that local trees were producing, the
myriad shapes of pine cones as they unfold, the taste of "fever
bush," and the smell of sweet gale.
The unfinished manuscript, cataloging dozens of
species, affords a fascinating glimpse into Thoreau's method as an
amateur student of nature--a method worthy of close study and imitation.
Dean adds greatly to it with his intelligent commentary, which revisits
Thoreau's sources, corrects a few of his errors, and emphasizes the
writer's importance to natural history and belles-lettres alike. --Gregory
McNamee
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