WALDEN AND CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
Henry David Thoreau
CONTENTS
Where I Lived, and What I Lived For
Former Inhabitants and Winter Visitors
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
Classic Literature: Words and Phrases adapted from the Collins English Dictionary
In 1819, millworker William Collins from Glasgow, Scotland, set up a company for printing and publishing pamphlets, sermons, hymn books and prayer books. That company was Collins and was to mark the birth of HarperCollins Publishers as we know it today. The long tradition of Collins dictionary publishing can be traced back to the first dictionary William published in 1824, Greek and English Lexicon. Indeed, from 1840 onwards, he began to produce illustrated dictionaries and even obtained a licence to print and publish the Bible.
Soon after, William published the first Collins novel, Ready Reckoner, however it was the time of the Long Depression, where harvests were poor, prices were high, potato crops had failed and violence was erupting in Europe. As a result, many factories across the country were forced to close down and William chose to retire in 1846, partly due to the hardships he was facing.
Aged 30, William’s son, William II took over the business. A keen humanitarian with a warm heart and a generous spirit, William II was truly ‘Victorian’ in his outlook. He introduced new, up-to-date steam presses and published affordable editions of Shakespeare’s works and The Pilgrim’s Progress, making them available to the masses for the first time. A new demand for educational books meant that success came with the publication of travel books, scientific books, encyclopaedias and dictionaries. This demand to be educated led to the later publication of atlases and Collins also held the monopoly on scripture writing at the time.
In the 1860s Collins began to expand and diversify and the idea of ‘books for the millions’ was developed. Affordable editions of classical literature were published and in 1903 Collins introduced 10 titles in their Collins Handy Illustrated Pocket Novels. These proved so popular that a few years later this had increased to an output of 50 volumes, selling nearly half a million in their year of publication. In the same year, The Everyman’s Library was also instituted, with the idea of publishing an affordable library of the most important classical works, biographies, religious and philosophical treatments, plays, poems, travel and adventure. This series eclipsed all competition at the time and the introduction of paperback books in the 1950s helped to open that market and marked a high point in the industry.
HarperCollins is and has always been a champion of the classics and the current Collins Classics series follows in this tradition – publishing classical literature that is affordable and available to all. Beautifully packaged, highly collectible and intended to be reread and enjoyed at every opportunity.
Slavery is always driven by economics. In order to maximize profits, it is unnecessary to attract a labour force, it is unnecessary to pay wages, and it is unnecessary to provide more than the most basic utilities. The Atlantic slave trade began at a time when there were burgeoning commercial interests between European and New World nations, which meant that access to an unlimited workforce at relatively low expense was enough to initiate a trade-triangle that was to last for around 300 years. European trading ships would sail to the west coast of Africa, where they would purchase shipments of slaves from Arab slavers in exchange for cargoes of European products. The ships would then sail to the Caribbean and North America, where the slaves were sold for profit to plantation owners. The ships would then return to Europe laden with commodities to be sold for further profit.
Plenty of people made a great deal of money directly from the slave trade and that money filtered down to all levels of society in the West, supported by all manner of secondary and tertiary industries. In effect, the modernization of the West’s infrastructure was significantly funded by the free labour of African slaves. Thankfully, that process of modernization also included moral and ethical developments. Public consciousness became enlightened enough to see that slavery had to end.
When the Atlantic slave trade began it was a different story. Africa was regarded as a mysterious wilderness populated by peoples primitive in both culture and mind. Africans were consequently viewed as animal-like, and hence treating them as livestock was considered reasonable. They were viewed as the perfect workforce – human enough to be capable of useful work and to understand orders, yet not human enough to warrant comfort, wellbeing, and freedom. The myth of the inferior Negro mind was perpetuated because it suited those who had something to gain. In time, the idea became so ingrained in Caucasian