书名：Walden and Other Writings 瓦尔登湖及梭罗作品集
难度：Lexile蓝思阅读指数1420
作者：Henry David Thoreau 亨利·大卫·梭罗
出版社名称：Bantam Classics
出版时间：1981
语种： 英文
ISBN：9780553212464
商品尺寸：17.5 x10.5 x 2cm
包装：简装
页数：448

Walden《瓦尔登湖》是美国作家梭罗独居瓦尔登湖畔的记录，描绘了他两年多时间里的所见、所闻和所思。此书风格独特，句子平铺直叙（straightforward），简洁（concise）和有观点（to the point），堪称美国现代文学中散文作品的典范。此外，其与《圣经》一同被美国国会评为“塑造人类文明25部作品”之一。
清华大学2016年的录取通知书内赠《瓦尔登湖》，校长邱勇：“《瓦尔登湖》是一本使人安静的书。作者亨利·戴维·梭罗在向读者展示瓦尔登湖自然美景的同时，也展示了一种物质上简朴至极、精神上丰盈充实的生活状态。”希望新生们在阅读中体会到作者深入思考与重塑自我的心路历程，感受到宁静的巨大力量，寻找到自己心中的瓦尔登湖。
Walden and Other Writings《瓦尔登湖及梭罗作品集》为Bantam Classics推出的英文版，内容包括Walden《瓦尔登湖》全书及梭罗的其他作品，适合有一定英文基础的文学爱好者阅读。
With their call for “simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!”, for self-honesty, and for harmony with nature, the writings of Henry David Thoreau are perhaps the most influential philosophical works in all American literature.
The selections in this volume represent Thoreau at his best. Included in their entirety areWalden, his indisputable masterpiece, and his two great arguments for nonconformity,Civil Disobedience andLife Without Principle. A lifetime of brilliant observation of nature—and of himself—is recorded in selections fromA Week On The Concord And Merrimack Rivers,Cape Cod,The Maine Woods andThe Journal.

梭罗远离尘嚣，他想在自然的安谧中寻找一种本真的生存状态，寻求一种更诗意的生活。Walden《瓦尔登湖》一书，详细地记录了作家在长达两年的时间里的日常生活状态以及所思所想，他在小木屋旁开荒种地，春种秋收，自给自足。他是一个自然之子，他崇尚自然，与自然交朋友，与湖水、森林和飞鸟对话，在林中观察动物和植物，在船上吹笛，在湖边钓鱼，晚上，在小木屋中记下自己的观察和思考。他追求精神生活，关注灵魂的成长，他骄傲地宣称：“每个人都是自己王国的国王，与这个王国相比，沙皇帝国也不过是一个卑微小国，犹如冰天雪地中的小雪团。”梭罗以他的实际行动告诉我们：人们所追求的大部分奢侈品，大部分的所谓生活的舒适，非但没有必要，而且对人类进步大有妨碍。
Walden by noted transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau, is a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings. The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and manual for self-reliance. First published in 1854, it details Thoreau’s experiences over the course of two years, two months, and two days in a cabin he built near Walden Pond, amidst woodland owned by his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, near Concord, Massachusetts. The book compresses the time into a single calendar year and uses passages of four seasons to symbolize human development. By immersing himself in nature, Thoreau hoped to gain a more objective understanding of society through personal introspection. Simple living and self-sufficiency were Thoreau’s other goals, and the whole project was inspired by transcendentalist philosophy, a central theme of the American Romantic Period. As Thoreau made clear in his book, his cabin was not in wilderness but at the edge of town, about two miles (3 km) from his family home.

亨利·大卫·梭罗，美国知名作家，1817年7月12日出生于马萨诸塞州康科德镇。1837年毕业于哈佛大学，毕业后他回到家乡以教书为业。1841年起他不再教书而转为写作。在知名作家爱默生的支持下，梭罗开始了超验主义实践，撰写了大量随笑。1845年7月4日，28岁的梭罗独自一人来到距离康科德两英里的瓦尔登湖畔，建造了一个小木屋住了下来。此后他根据自己对生活的观察与思考，整理并发表了两本著作《康科德和梅里马克河上的一周》和《瓦尔登湖》。1847年，梭罗结束了离群索居的生活，回到原来的村落，仍然保持着自己简朴的生活风格，并将主要精力投入写作、讲课和观察当地的植物、动物。1862年5月6日，梭罗因病去世，年仅45岁。梭罗才华横溢，勤奋著书，一生共创作了二十多部一流的散文集。他被称为自然随笔的创始者，其文简练有力，朴实自然，富有思想性，在美国19世纪散文中独树一帜。
Henry David Thoreau was born July 12, 1817—“just in the nick of time,” as he wrote, for the “flowering of New England,” when the area boasted such eminent citizens as Emerson, Hawthorne, Whitman and Melville. Raised in genteel poverty— his father made and sold pencils from their home - Thoreau enjoyed, nevertheless, a fine education, graduating from Harvard in 1837. In that year, the young thinker met Emerson and formed the close friendship that became the most significant of his life. Guided, sponsored and aided by his famous older colleague, Thoreau began to publish essays in The Dial, exhibiting the radical originality that would gain the disdain of his contemporaries but the great admiration of all succeeding generations.
In 1845, Thoreau began the living experiment for which he is most famous. During his two years and two months in the shack beside the New England pond, he wrote his first important work, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849), was arrested for refusing to pay his poll tax to a government that supported slavery (recorded in “Civil Disobedience”) and gathered the material for his masterpiece, Walden (1854). He spent the rest of his life writing and lecturing and died, relatively unappreciated, in 1862.

Introduction 
A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 
WALDEN 
Economy 
Complemental Verses
Where I Lived, and What I Lived for
Reading
Sounds
Solitude
Visitors
The Beanfield
The Village
The Ponds
Baker Farm
Higher Laws
Brute Neighbors
House-Warming
Former Inhabitants; and Winter Visitors
Winter Animals
The Pond in Winter
Spring
Conclusion
LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE 
THE MAINE WOODS 
CAPE COD 
THE JOURNAL
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Economy
When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again.
I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice of my readers if very particular inquiries had not been made by my townsmen concerning my mode of life, which some would call impertinent, though they do not appear to me at all impertinent, but, considering the circumstances, very natural and pertinent. Some have asked what I got to eat; if I did not feel lonesome; if I was not afraid; and the like. Others have been curious to learn what portion of my income I devoted to charitable purposes; and some, who have large families, how many poor children I maintained. I will therefore ask those of my readers who feel no particular interest in me to pardon me if I undertake to answer some of these questions in this book. In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference. We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men’s lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me. Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply to them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits.
I would fain say something, not so much concerning the Chinese and Sandwich Islanders as you who read these pages, who are said to live in New England; something about your condition, especially your outward condition or circumstances in this world, in this town, what it is, whether it is necessary that it be as bad as it is, whether it cannot be improved as well as not. I have travelled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways.