Issue No. 1
The Shore
Thoreau, and six poems of the sea
Made to live in the real world.
Pocket. Beach. Ferry. Waiting room.
Coffee. Rain. Sand. Time.
Then leave it somewhere good.
Beater Books are small books for carrying: four by five inches and forty-eight pages, printed on weatherproof Rite in the Rain paper that shrugs off spray, rain and a wet hand. Old writing, worth reading again, in a book you don't have to be careful with.
Pre-order
$15 + shipping
First printing of 100 copies. Ships early 2027.
Pre-orders open soonYou're charged when you order. If we can't ship by the date above, we'll write and you can cancel for a full refund. You can also cancel any time before it ships.
In this issue
- The Shipwreck Henry David Thoreau
- The Wreck of the Hesperus Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- I started early, took my dog Emily Dickinson
- Dover Beach Matthew Arnold
- On the Beach at Night Alone Walt Whitman
- Sea-Fever John Masefield
- Crossing the Bar Alfred, Lord Tennyson
In October 1849 Thoreau set out for Cape Cod and walked into the aftermath of a wreck at Cohasset. His account opens the issue. The poems follow it from the wreck, through fear and doubt and the size of the sea, to longing, and to peace.
The Wreck of the “Atlantic” — Cast Up by the Sea. Winslow Homer, Harper’s Weekly, 1873. The frontispiece.
The object
- Size
- 4 × 5 in. Fits a back pocket.
- Pages
- 48, saddle stitched.
- Paper
- Rite in the Rain, the weatherproof stock surveyors and soldiers write on.
- Type
- EB Garamond.
- Cover
- The outer Cape from Provincetown to Nauset, from an 1879 U.S. Coast Survey chart.
- In the back
- Notes pages, and a field note: where did you read this?
The cover design. Photographs of the printed book to follow.
Hear when it ships
One email when pre-orders open, one when Issue 1 ships, and one when there's a new issue. That's all.