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Henry David Thoreau was a sturdy individualist and a lover of nature. In March, 1845, he built himself a wooden hut on the edge of Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts, where he lived until September 1847. Walden is Thoreaus autobiograophical account of his Robinson Crusoe existence, bare of creature comforts but rich in contemplation of the wonders of nature and the ways of man. On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience is the classic protest against government's interference with individual liberty, and is considered one of the most famous essays ever written. This newly repackaged edition also includes a selection of Thoreau's poetry.
Jonathan Levin is Dean of the School of Humanities and Professor of Literature and Culture at SUNY-Purchase. His research interests include nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature and culture, modernism and modernity, and environmental studies. He is the author of The Poetics of Transition: Emerson, Pragmatism, and American Literary Modernism, as well as numerous essays and reviews.
Thoreau began his studies at Harvard College in 1833. His years at Harvard were stimulating, if solitary; he immersed himself in a traditional humanities curriculum of multiple languages, anatomy, history, and geography. Upon graduation in 1837, he began teaching in Concord at the Center School, the public school he'd attended as a boy, but left his post after being told to administer corporal punishment to a student. During these years following college Thoreau published his first essay and poem, began lecturing at the Concord Lyceum, and attended Transcendentalist discussions at the home of his mentor, the renowned essayist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson. At Emerson's urging, Thoreau started a journal -- a project that would become his lifelong passion and culminate in more than two million words.
A boat trip with his brother, John, in 1839 set the foundation for his well known work A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Sadly, unforeseen tragedy separated the tightly knit brothers in 1842, when John died of lockjaw caused by a razor cut. The following year, Thoreau joined Emerson in editing the Transcendental periodical The Dial, a publication to which Thoreau would become a prolific contributor. He also pulled up stakes for a time, accepting a position to tutor Emerson's children in Staten Island, New York. Half a year later, Thoreau returned to his family's house in Concord, deeply affected by the abolitionists he had met in Manhattan. He dedicated much of his time to lectures and essays advocating abolition and became involved in sheltering runaway slaves on their journey north.
In 1846 Thoreau was briefly imprisoned for refusing to pay a poll tax to the village of Concord, in protest against the government's support of slavery, as well as its war of expansion with Mexico. His experience in the Concord jail led to the writing of what would later be titled "Civil Disobedience." Unappreciated in Thoreau's lifetime, "Civil Disobedience" is now considered one of the country's seminal political works.
During this period, Thoreau built his cabin on Walden Pond and lived there for a little more than two years. In this small home on Emerson's property, he began writing his most enduring work, Walden; or, Life in the Woods, and finished the manuscript for A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Sales were exceedingly poor, with Thoreau eventually acquiring 706 unsold copies of the original 1000 copy print run. Thoreau quipped, "I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself." When Walden was published in 1854, sales were brisk and its reception favorable, although Thoreau's work as a whole remained somewhat obscure during his lifetime.
By the time Walden was published, Thoreau had turned from the largely symbolic approach to nature that he had learned from Emerson and other Romantic writers to a much more empirical approach, more in keeping with new scientific methods. His observations of nature throughout the 1850s, largely recorded in his journals, have come to be regarded as a model of ecological attentiveness, even though the term "ecology" was not coined until 1866. He developed several talks on the natural history of the Concord region, and even set to work on a series of longer, book-length manuscripts. Two of these, one on the dispersal of tree seeds and the other on the region's many wild fruits, were not published until 1993 and 2000 respectively. Today, Thoreau's writing is valued for both the poetic imagination and the scientific methodology it displays.
As the years passed, Thoreau's commitment to the antislavery movement strengthened, as did his popularity as a lecturer and essayist. Even in the declining health of his later years, he remained a man of conviction and action, writing on many subjects and participating in various political causes until shortly before his death from tuberculosis. George Eliot's review of Walden singles out qualities that attract readers to this day: "a deep poetic sensibility" and "a refined as well as a hardy mind." Henry David Thoreau died on May 6, 1862, in Concord.
Author biography from the Barnes & Noble Classics edition of Walden.
Both of his elder brothers were schoolteachers who helped to pay Thoreau's way through Harvard (about $179 a year in 1837).
Most biographers remain undecided about Thoreau's sexuality. He never married, although he proposed to friend Ellen Sewall in 1840 (she rejected his offer). Some believe he was a "repressed" homosexual, and others that he was asexual and wholly celibate.
Thoreau's grave is located in the Sleepy Hollow cemetery at Concord, Massachusetts, beside those of fellow literary legends Nathaniel Hawthorne and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
In the summer of 1845, Henry David Thoreau moved into a small cabin he'd built near the shore of Walden Pond, about a mile and a half south of his native village of Concord, Massachusetts. Although Thoreau's experience over the next two years, two months, and two days could hardly be considered a wilderness adventure, it did nevertheless constitute a significant departure from the norm. Most of his neighbors, at least, thought he was a little bit crazy. As Thoreau suggests in the early chapters of Walden, he set out to conduct an experiment: Could he survive, possibly even thrive, by stripping away all superfluous luxuries, living a plain, simple life in radically reduced conditions? Besides building his own shelter and providing the fuel to heat it (that is, chopping his own firewood), he would grow and catch his own food, even provide his own entertainment. It was, as he delighted to point out, an experiment in basic home economics; but in truth, his aim was to investigate the larger moral and spiritual economy of such a life. If, as he notes in the book's first chapter, the "mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation," perhaps by leaving it all behind and starting over on the relatively isolated shores of Walden Pond he could restore some of life's seemingly diminished vigor.
Indeed, there is plenty of undiminished vigor on display in these pages. Nathaniel Hawthorne in his journal described Henry as "a young man with much of wild original nature still remaining in him" (Hawthorne, The Heart of Hawthorne's Journals, p. 105; see "For Further Reading"), and readers have often since regarded him—along with Walt Whitman—as something like the wild man of nineteenth-century American literature. Few readers ever forget the start of Walden's "Higher Laws" chapter: "As I came home through the woods with my string of fish, trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, I caught a glimpse of a woodchuck stealing across my path, and felt a strange thrill of savage delight, and was strongly tempted to seize and devour him raw; not that I was hungry then, except for that wildness which he represented". In many respects, Thoreau went to Walden in search of the raw, hoping that an infusion of "savage delight" would cure him and (by the example he would provide) his neighbors of what he regarded as over-civilization, which he linked to timidity and uncritical faith in the authority of others. Throughout Walden, and indeed throughout the greater part of his writing, the impulse to simplify conditions and cast off the debilitating and dispiriting obligations of a respectable life is bound up with this pursuit of uninhibited, unadulterated wildness. His admiration for wildness in nature was unbounded. "Life consists with wildness," he comments in the popular talk now known to readers as "Walking." "The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him" (Thoreau, Collected Essays and Poems, p. 240). "Hope and the future for me," he adds, "are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps" (p. 241).
Of course, Thoreau was hardly an actual wild man, a point he acknowledges in another talk, "Wild Apples," when he notes that "our wild apple is wild only like myself, perchance, who belong not to the aboriginal race here, but have strayed into the woods from the cultivated stock" (Thoreau, p. 452). As this comment suggests, Thoreau recognized that he came to the woods as a highly developed product of civilized society. So too his approach to the Walden environs should be regarded not as a kind of wilderness adventure—Walden was hardly a wilderness, then as now—but rather as an effort to locate and give voice to the wildness that subsists with and within the cultivated and domesticated. Late in Walden, offering an analogy from nature for the kind of extravagance he emulates in his writing, he notes that the migrating buffalo seeking "new pastures in another latitude, is not extravagant like the cow which kicks over the pail, leaps the cow-yard fence, and runs after her calf, in milking time". It is telling, in ways that few readers have fully understood, that Thoreau should actually prefer this cow to the seemingly wilder buffalo. What appeals to him about the cow is that its wild instinct has survived domestication: The wildness Thoreau pursues is not found in complete isolation from civilized and domesticating influences but rather survives in a deep, if sometimes unacknowledged, layer of being underlying those influences. The experiment at Walden Pond was an attempt to recover such wildness, as it survived on the margins of Concord village life and beneath the smooth and refined surface of even the most modern, educated, and enlightened men and women.
TheNightTide
Posted June 11, 2009
I read this novel shortly before entering college and i can honestly say that it was one of the greatest books i have ever had the pleasure of reading. Thoreau constantly forced me to see things as i had never seen them and challenged my definition of citizenry itself. However, this book is not an easy read, and it will take time and thought to fully understand and appreciate.
5 out of 5 people found this review helpful.
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Posted April 16, 2009
The American Transcendentalist Movement is often considered a reactionary intellectual movement to the traditions and principles of the Enlightenment; the dichotomy existing between the Period of Enlightenment and the Period of Romanticism. Transcendentalism is an extraordinarily complex intellectual movement that stressed the individual's purpose and role within civil society and the hierarchy of the world. Transcendentalism consisted of the constant renewal and introspection of the inward self, or the self-sufficient, self-autonomous and self-determined self that represents the individualistic entity. In addition, Transcendentalism calls for following one's own conscious and the avoidance of being enthralled to external events and factors that act to the detriment of the innate and inward self. Thoreauvian philosophy called for the noviolent resistance (subject and content specific) to policies promulgated by civil society that is despotic and tyrannical, or anything that acts contrary to the will of the individual and its autonomous spirit.
Henry David Thoreau supported a limited role of government, and supported the rights of the minority. Whilst Hobbesian philosophy supported a strong, centralized government in the tradition of Thucydidean Realism, Henry David Thoreau was an individualist alongiside the similar philosophies and convictions of Soren Kierkegaard, Aristotle, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, John Locke, etc. On an additional factor, Henry David Thoreau was opposed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's concept of the social contract as an agglomeration of the majority or the 'General Will' or of 'Popular Sovereignty' as it violated and displayed a total disregard and abhorrence for the rights of the minority. In essence, no Truth or higher ideal acts contrary to the conscious whether held in contrary regard by a single individual, a class of a few individuals or by the general populace as according to the Thoreauvian tradition.
I highly recommend "Walden" and "Civil Disobediance" by Henry David Thoreau as such works reveal the innermost quarters of the human character; into the most precipitous and deepest of depths of the human spirit and mind. Henry David Thoreau infused his works with great passion, beauty, devotion and sensuality. He utilized vivid imagery and descriptive language; his works are voluptuous, harmonious and melodious.
5 out of 6 people found this review helpful.
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Posted February 23, 2009
There has been no equal, nor will there be, to Henry David Thoreau. His writings and ideas truly magnify the human essence and bring out the worst and best aspects of being "human." His contemplations while at Walden pond are truly inspiring and edifying. How wonderful would life be if we could learn to give up the material and transitory things in this world. Walden and Civil Disobedience makes one wonder about one's interactions with other people and one's internal conflicts. A must have for deep thinkers and for those who seek to become more open-minded--set your minds free!
4 out of 5 people found this review helpful.
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Posted April 20, 2009
I read Walden many years ago and I called it my sure cure for insomnia. Now that I'm more mature, Walden's words resonate deep within me. Although this work was published 100 years before I was born, when I read it, I feel like Thoreau and I share the same soul. We have the same views, sensibilities, and foibles. At heart we are societal rebels and find incomparable delight and satisfaction in life's simple and natural treasures. Walden is a beautiful reminder that those of us who "march to the beat of a different drummer" are very much in tune with the rhythm of life.
3 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
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Posted January 9, 2005
Thoreau is a poet at heart, and a philosophic genius in mind. Walden will keep readers hanging on every word. The true beauty of the Transcendentalist movement is highlighted in the best sense with Walden. The story is an autobiographical account of Thoreau's experiment to discover the true meaning of living deliberately. Walden is not a widely-known piece, but is a worthwhile read for anyone who has an appreciation for great literature.
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Posted January 9, 2006
Envokes thoughts of necessities, while he demonstrates his vast knowledge. He definitely has disected each part of his philosohpy and portrayed it in a smooth form.
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Posted January 20, 2006
I believe that Thoreau, though he may have been an intelligent and respectable fellow in his own way, spoke in a very belittling manner throughout this book. He doesn't take any other perspective than his own into consideration when writing down his judgments and recommendations for society. While I do respect some of the insight Thoreau presented throughout the book I found it ridiculous how much better he seemed to believe himself to be than the rest of the society at the time. In parting, I'd like to share one of my favorite quotes from Walden: '¿Sometimes, when I compare myself with other men, it seems as if I were more favored by the gods than they, beyond any deserts that I am conscious of as if I had a warrant and surety at their hands which my fellows have not, and were especially guided and guarded. I do not flatter myself, but if it be possible they flatter me.¿ (123)
0 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
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Posted January 12, 2004
Self- reliance in the experiment of yet another great American original in his effort to live a life worthwhile, confront his true self. The language is aphoristic and poetically rich, not always easy going, but the reader will be rewarded by so much beauty and insight and such a great feeling of the life of the American observer and thinker as transcendent journey that it is well worth the extra effort. One of America's great books, and one which should be read by anyone who wishes to know its true character in love of individuality and independance.
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Posted April 19, 2001
A step for freedom for man is always right. Free speech, free writting, freedom
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