Excursions presents texts of nine essays, including some of Henry D.
Thoreau's most engaging and popular works, newly edited and based on the
most authoritative versions of each. These essays represent Thoreau in
many stages of his writing career, ranging from 1842--when he accepted
Emerson's commission to review four volumes of botanical and zoological
catalogues in an essay that was published in The Dial as "Natural
History of Massachusetts"--to 1862, when he prepared "Wild Apples," a
lecture he had delivered during the Concord Lyceum's 1859-1860 season,
for publication in the Atlantic Monthly after his death. Three other
early meditations on natural history and human nature, "A Winter Walk,"
"A Walk to Wachusett," and "The Landlord," were originally published in
1842 and 1843. Lively, light pieces, they reveal Thoreau's early use of
themes and approaches that recur throughout his work. "A Yankee in
Canada," a book-length account of an 1850 trip to Quebec that was
published in part in 1853, is a fitting companion to Cape Cod and The
Maine Woods, Thoreau's other long accounts of explorations of internal
as well as external geography. In the last four essays, "The Succession
of Forest Trees" (1860), "Autumnal Tints" (1862), "Walking" (1862), and
"Wild Apples" (1862), Thoreau describes natural and philosophical
phenomena with a breadth of view and generosity of tone that are
characteristic of his mature writing. In their skillful use of precisely
observed details to arrive at universal conclusions, these late essays
exemplify Transcendental natural history at its best.
