The Works of Henry David Thoreau, Manuscript Edition, 20 Volumes
Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1906
Set No. 196 of 600
 
Contains a tipped in, double-sided page of Thoreau's writing that was likely composed as part of Thoreau's lecture version for Cape Cod and eventually became part of Chapter six, "The Beach Again".  The first volume is also signed by Publisher Houghton Mifflin.  he books are bound in a beautiful deep hunter green letter with bright gilt lettering.
 
This gorgeous set is overall in near fine condition with two minor exceptions.  There is a small tear in the manuscript page at the top near the seam (circled in red in the photographs).  The tear looks like a written slash, but it is actually a small enclosed tear in the manuscript page.  And when closed, the pages on the top of Volume VI (Familiar Letters) are dented along a signature as though something sat on top of them. 
 
Notes about the Manuscript: We would like to thank Thoreau expert Elizabeth Witherell for providing the following information about the manuscript page:
 
This manuscript is made up of versions of passages found in chapter six (“The Beach Again”) of the book publication of Cape Cod, which occurred in 1865; those passages follow this note. The first four chapters of Cape Cod were serialized in Putnam’s Monthly Magazine in June, July, and August 1855. Thoreau had sent copy for chapters five and six to Putnam’s editor, but a decision was made by the magazine to discontinue publication after chapter four, perhaps because of negative reactions by residents of the Cape to Thoreau’s descriptions of them; see Cape Cod (Princeton, 1988), pp. 267-277, for a full discussion of this situation.
 
Thoreau gave six lectures based on his first two trips to the Cape, October 9-15, 1849, and June 25-July 1, 1850. The first of these lectures was in January 1850 and the last was a year later, in January 1851. Two features of this manuscript suggest that it is part of Thoreau’s work on the lecture version of what became “The Beach Again.” One feature, on the recto, indicates that it dates from after his second trip to the Cape: he writes, “I was astonished (last June) to observe the shallownes of the Bay off Billingsgate Point”. Another feature, on the verso, is a comment that seems to be directed to an audience in a coastal town: describing the appearance “[a]t midsummer in the middle of the Bay” of a “glassy calm strip,” he writes, “I know not how it may be here”. On December 6, 1850, Thoreau spoke about the Cape Cod excursion in Newburyport, Massachusetts, which is situated where the Merrimack River widens into a bay, and on January 15, 1851, he spoke about it in Portland, Maine, sited on Casco Bay.
 
He cancelled both “last June” and “I know not how it may be here”; it seems likely that he did so when he was revising the lecture pages for the essay version he thought would appear in Putnam’s. These features are not inappropriate for a lecture, but they do tie the presentation to a particular date and place.