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Henry David Thoreau
(1817 - 1862)
Category: American Literature Born: July 12, 1817
Concord, Massachusetts, United States Died: May 6, 1862
Concord, Massachusetts, United States
Related authors:
Iris Murdoch, Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman
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| 5/6/1862 |
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Thoreau as Porcupine & Orchid
On this day in 1862 Henry David Thoreau died at the age of forty-four, from bronchial and respiratory problems. Thoreau was an integral but prickly member of the Transcendentalist community in Massachusetts -- as might be expected from the writer of "I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude," and as described in Emerson's funeral eulogy. |
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| 7/23/1846 |
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Thoreau, Taxes, Disobedience
On this day in 1846, Henry David Thoreau was jailed for not paying his poll tax. Thoreau was almost exactly half-way through his Walden stay, and had come to Concord to pick up a shoe at the cobblers; this came to the attention of Sam Staples, tax collector and warden of the county jail, who was under orders from the town fathers to confront and, if necessary, confine this most contrary of its sons. |
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| 8/9/1854 |
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Few Hear the Walden Wake-Up Call
On this day in 1854, Henry David Thoreau's Walden; or, Life in the Woods was published. Emerson reported a "tremble of great expectation" in his friend just before publication day, a prowling about Concord as "the undoubted King of all American lions"; only 750 copies sold in the first year, and a second edition was not needed until after Thoreau's death. |
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| 8/9/1854 |
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Thoreau and Walden
Mid-nineteenth century America was awash with reform movements and counter-culture experiments, and Henry David Thoreau could have his pick. Instead, exercising his belief that "I'd rather live in a private Hell than a public Heaven," he borrowed land from Emerson and an axe from Bronson Alcott and marked off a sunny, south-facing slope of Walden Pond. . . . |
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| 10/28/1853 |
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Thoreau Gets Week Back
On this day in 1853, Henry David Thoreau received back from his publisher the 706 unsold copies (out of 1000 printed) of his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, published four years earlier at his own expense. In his journal later the same day, the ever-resilient Thoreau described his "purchase" as "a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself." |
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Academy of American Poets
Thoreau biography, bibliography, and links.
"A tireless champion of the human spirit against the materialism and conformity that he saw as dominant in American culture, Thoreau's ideas about civil disobedience, as set forth in his 1849 essay, have influenced, among others, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., and his mastery of prose style has been acknowledged by writers as disparate as Robert Louis Stevenson, Marcel Proust, Sinclair Lewis, and Henry Miller. Largely ignored in his own time, the self-styled 'inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms' has emerged as one of America's greatest literary figures." |  | Henry David Thoreau at Transcendentalism.com
Extensive collection of Thoreau pages and links, including literary criticism and analysis of Walden, Civil Disobedience, Slavery in Massachusetts and other works. Also offered: biographies, images, quotations, bibliographies, essays on Transcendentalism. A similar collection about Ralph Waldo Emerson is also available. | | Literary Traveler
Find personal accounts of visits to Walden Pond and Concord River written by fans of the author's works visiting the now legendary locales.
"Thoreau was studying the science of existence. What does it mean to be a human being? What does it cost to exist? What is the best way to live, where, how and in what fashion? These were the questions he asked and when we come to Walden Pond to talk to him, to speak our peace, we should listen closely, for we may hear his silent answer amongst our own voices." | |
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The TinL masthead features photography by
Natasha D'Schommer
, and the book art featured is by Jim Rosenau.
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