This exhibition brought focus to two iconic desks that played a major role in America’s literary tradition. The first, a Windsor writing-arm chair, was the desk at which Ralph Waldo Emerson penned his first book, Nature. The second, the humble green desk of Henry David Thoreau, became no less a literary star as it accompanied Thoreau from the schoolroom where he taught with his brother to the pond where he drafted his most influential work, Walden. These two desks from the Concord Museum collection were exhibited side by side in the gallery.