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." It had been nine years since Thoreau had taken Bronson Alcott's axe to Emerson's woods and exercised his choice "not to live in this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century." This is a long time to wait for one who proposed, as the title page of the first edition put it, "to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up ... FULL STORY »
