Cape Cod
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Compiled from magazine articles published in the 1850s after his death, Cape Cod details several short trips Thoreau made to "the bare and bended arm ofMassachusetts" between 1849 and 1855. "He went to the Cape out of curiosity," explains Paul Theroux, "but in the course of his travel a great thing happened: Thoreau, the woodsman and landlubber, discovered the sea."
Encounters with the ocean dominate the book, from the fatal shipwreck of the opening episode to the late reflections on the Pilgrims' Cape Cod landing and reconnaissance. Along the way, Thoreau relates the experiences of fishermen and oystermen, lighthouse keepers and ship captains, and their chronicles of exploration, settlement, and survival on the Cape against the threats of the wild sea and of encroaching modernity.
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Henry David Thoreau (1817â1862) was an American essayist, naturalist, philosopher, and poet. Born at Concord, Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard, he began his career as a teacher. Through his older friend and neighbor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, he became a part of the Transcendentalist circle and one of that groupâs most eloquent spokespersons. He is best known for his book Walden and his essay âOn the Duty of Civil Disobedience.â
Patrick Cullen (a.k.a. John Lescault), a native of Massachusetts, is a graduate of the Catholic University of America. He lives in Washington, DC, where he works in theater.
