Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) was an American essayist, naturalist and philosopher, author of Walden, the account of two years spent in a cabin by Walden Pond, and of Civil Disobedience, an essay on the duty to resist unjust laws that inspired Gandhi and Martin Luther King. A friend of Emerson, he was a leading figure of Transcendentalism.
Works
Walden; or, Life in the Woods
Concord
Thoreau was born in 1817 in Concord, Massachusetts, where his father ran a small pencil factory. He studied at Harvard, then taught school with his brother John, introducing nature walks into the lessons. He also improved the family's pencils with a new method of mixing graphite.
He became a friend and disciple of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the leader of the Transcendentalists, who believed in the goodness of nature and of the individual. Thoreau lived for a time in Emerson's house as a handyman and contributed to the group's journal, The Dial.
Walden
On 4 July 1845, Thoreau moved into a small cabin he had built on Emerson's land by Walden Pond, two miles from Concord. He lived there for two years, two months and two days, growing beans, reading, writing and observing the woods and the pond through the seasons.
He was not a hermit: he walked into town often and received visitors. Walden, or Life in the Woods, published in 1854 after many revisions, condenses the experience into one year and argues for a simple, deliberate life free from unnecessary possessions.
Conscience and nature
In 1846 Thoreau spent a night in jail for refusing to pay a poll tax, in protest against slavery and the Mexican War; someone paid it for him. He explained his stand in an essay later known as Civil Disobedience, published in 1849.
He became an ardent opponent of slavery, defending the abolitionist John Brown. A surveyor by trade, he filled a vast journal with observations of plants and animals. He died of tuberculosis in Concord in 1862, at forty-four.
Anecdotes
A night in jail
According to a story often told, Emerson visited Thoreau in jail and asked him why he was there. Thoreau is said to have answered by asking Emerson why he was not there. The anecdote is probably a legend, but it captures their difference of temperament.
The pencil maker
Thoreau worked for years in the family pencil business and developed a better way of making leads by mixing finely ground graphite with clay. Thoreau pencils were considered among the best in America in the 1840s.
Frequently asked questions
What is Walden about?
Thoreau's experiment of living simply in a cabin by Walden Pond from 1845 to 1847, and his reflections on nature, work, solitude and freedom.
What is Civil Disobedience?
An essay published in 1849 in which Thoreau argues that individuals should refuse to obey unjust laws and should not let governments make them agents of injustice.
Who were the Transcendentalists?
A group of New England writers and thinkers of the 1830s and 1840s, led by Emerson and including Thoreau and Margaret Fuller, who emphasised intuition, nature and self-reliance.