Walden
(Henry David Thoreau)

Early Life

Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts in 1817. While he arrived right at the beginning of what was known as the “American Romantic” period, Thoreau’s family teetered on the edge of poverty, keeping themselves afloat by manufacturing homemade pencils. Despite his humble beginnings, Thoreau was educated at the most prestigious institutions Massachusetts had to offer, including Harvard. While there, he took special interest in languages, philosophy, and history.

Graduating in 1837, he took a job teaching in the Concord school system but quickly resigned, reportedly due to his refusal to administer corporal punishment to his students. Alongside his brother, he founded his own school, Concord Academy, in 1838. Widely known as a “progressive” institution, the curriculum included long nature walks and a philosophical approach to learning. He remained with the school until his brother died suddenly in 1842.

He continued to work in the family pencilmaking business for much of his adult life, though, by 1837, he considered himself to be primarily a philosopher.

Emerson, Transcendentalism, and the Road to Walden

In the late 1830s, Thoreau befriended Ralph Waldo Emerson, a widely known poet and essayist. His most famous essay, Nature, would have a profound impact on Thoreau’s thinking. Nature is usually credited as the jumping off point for the Transcendentalism movement.

Transcendentalism was the first significant philosophical movement to originate in the United States. A reaction to the prevailing notion that brilliant ideas mostly came from European scholars, a group of like-minded Massachusetts intellectuals (including Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and later Thoreau himself) banded together in their belief that true knowledge comes from intuition, self-awareness, and imagination rather than the cold logic and accepted wisdom of the past. They formed a social club which met regularly to discuss and refine their ideas. Emerson succinctly summed up the main tenets of Transcendentalism in a famous lecture dubbed The American Scholar:

“Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit.”

Thoreau soon began writing essays for The Dial, the Transcendental Club’s journal, becoming one of Transcendentalism’s most vocal supporters. In 1845, Transcendentalist poet Ellery Channing wrote a letter to Thoreau that would alter the course of his life significantly:

"I see nothing for you on this earth but that field which I once christened 'Briars'. Go out upon that, build yourself a hut, and there begin the grand process of devouring yourself alive. I see no alternative, no other hope for you.”

Thoreau took Channing’s advice. With Emerson’s help, he built a simple home on the edge of Walden Pond and spent 2 years, 2 months, and 2 days there. This experiment eventually resulted in Walden, one of the most celebrated works of American literature ever released.

Later Life and Death

"The State never intentionally confronts a man’s sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.”

Almost as soon as Thoreau left the woods of Walden for good, he encountered a local tax collector. Thoreau was reportedly 6 years delinquent. He refused to pay the taxes, giving his opposition to slavery and the Mexican-American War as his reasons. He was immediately jailed. Against his wishes, his aunt paid his taxes and he was freed the next day.

This experience led to Thoreau’s other significant contribution to American letters: Civil Disobedience. An indictment against injustice (and indifference to injustice), the book would have a lasting effect on a huge number of influential people around the world, including Mahatma Gandhi, John F. Kennedy, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

In his later years, Thoreau continued to write prodigiously, leaving behind a journal (begun at the urging of Ralph Waldo Emerson) containing upwards of 2 million words. He traveled extensively and wrote several treatises on natural history and botany. He also became a land surveyor before contracting tuberculosis and bronchitis. He died in 1862 at the age of 44.

When it became clear that he would not survive his illness, his Aunt Louisa asked him if he’d made peace with God. Thoreau reportedly considered it for a few moments before saying:

"I did not know we had ever quarreled."