Thoreau, Henry David (1817-1862)

Thoreau, Henry David (1817-1862)

American poet, prose-writer, and naturalist, a member of the school of Transcendentalm, chiefly influenced by the philosophic ideas of R. W. Emerson. Thoreau is known for his extreme individualism, his love of nature, his primitivistic preference for simple, even austere living, his tendencies toward mysticism, and his revolt against the demands of society and government.

His works include A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers ( 1849); Walden ( 1854), his most famous book; Excursions ( 1863); The Maine Woods ( 1864); Cape Cod ( 1865); A Yankee in Canada ( 1866); Early Spring in Massachusetts ( 1881), Summer ( 1884), Winter ( 1888), and Autumn ( 1892), selections from his massive Journal, which was published in its entirety, fourteen volumes, in 1906; Letters ( 1894); Poems of Nature ( 1895). Civil Disobedience ( 1849) and Life Without Principle ( 1863), are his best-known single essays, summarizing his ideas on the individual and society.

Thoreau was extremely eccentric, independent, and individualistic in his behavior. He spent several years in a little hut in the countryside near the village of Concord, Massachusetts, writing and observing nature; on one occasion he spent a day in jail for refusing to pay his poll-tax, because he disapproved of the war with Mexico then in process, regarding it merely as an expedition to seize land. In his later years he traveled in New England and Canada, lectured, especially in connection with the abolitionist movement, wrote in his journal, and worked on a study of the Indians which was never completed. He died of tuberculosis.