WILD FRUITS, Thoreau’s Rediscovered Last Manuscript.

New York: W. W. Norton, 2000. First edition, first printing. Illustrated with cartographic endpapers, and black and white illustrations by Abigail Rorer. 8vo, publisher’s original brown cloth over blue boards, lettered on the spine in gilt, and iin the original pictorially decorated dustjacket. xvii, 409 pp. A very fine copy, as mint but for a discreet blank embossed stamp of a former owner. A NEVER-BEFORE PUBLISHED WORK BY HENRY DAVID THOREAU, FIRST EDITION AND FIRST PRINTING.
“The final harvest of a great writer's last years, Wild Fruits presents Henry David Thoreau's sacramental vision of nature - a vision compelling in part because it grew out of an approach to the natural world at once scientific and mystical. The difficulties of Thoreau's handwriting, method of composition, notations and pagination have kept his final observations and meditations from publication until now; thanks to the assiduous efforts of Bradley Dean, this great work has been brought to light." - Jacket.
This work may be considered Thoreau’s last will and testament, in which he protests our desecration of the landscape, reflects on the importance of preserving wild spaces ‘for instruction and recreation,’ and envisions a new American scripture.”