Henry David Thoreau

Among the writers to emerge during the mid-19th century transcendental movement, Henry David Thoreau is perhaps the most popular and recognizable, thanks in no small part to his book Walden. After spending two years in a self-built cabin in the woods -- on the property of fellow writer and transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson -- the Massachusetts-born author, poet and philosopher put on paper his experiences among nature, listening to the sounds...

"Walden (first published as Walden; or, Life in the Woods) is an American book written by noted transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings. The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and manual for self-reliance. First published in 1854, it details Thoreau's experiences over the course of two years, two months, and two days in...

"In 1845, Thoreau moved to a cabin that he built with his own hands along the shores of Walden Pond in Massachusetts. Shedding the trivial ties that he felt bound much of humanity, Thoreau reaped from the land both physically and mentally, and pursued truth in the quiet of nature. In Walden, he explains how separating oneself from the world of men can truly awaken the sleeping self. Thoreau holds fast to the notion that you have not truly existed...

This is the story those who love to walk the length of lonely beaches, for Thoreau walks alone in this book.

"Disgusted by slavery and the Mexican War, Thoreau gave lectures on, 'The Rights and Duties of the Individual in relation to Government', which became the basis for this 1849 essay originally titled, 'Resistance to Civil Government'. Cited by both Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. as influential in their drive to create positive change through nonviolent means, Thoreau's essay is just as applicable today as people search for their own role...

Henry David Thoreau's vision of personal freedom is indelibly etched on the American consciousness. 'We need the tonic of wildness,' Thoreau wrote in Walden, and by turning his back on town amenities to build a house on Walden Pond in 1845, he helped shape our notions of the individual, subsistence, and a moral relation to nature. Raising white beans and potatoes that he sold to his Concord neighbors, he stayed for two years; his book records...

" Posthumously published in 1864, The Maine Woods depicts Henry David Thoreau's experiences in the forests of Maine, and expands on the author's transcendental theories on the relation of humanity to Nature. On Mount Katahdin, he faces a primal, untamed Nature. Katahdin is a place "not even scarred by man, but it was a specimen of what God saw fit to make this world." In Maine he comes in contact with "rocks, trees, wind and solid earth" as though...

Henry David Thoreaus Journal was his lifes work: the daily practice of writing that accompanied his daily walks, the workshop where he developed his books and essays, and a project in its own rightone of the most intensive explorations ever made of the everyday environment, the revolving seasons, and the changing self. It is a treasure trove of some of the finest prose in English and, for those acquainted with it, its prismatic pages exercise a hypnotic...

"The story begins with a short history of the apple tree, tracing its path from ancient Greece to America. Thoreau saw the apple as a perfect mirror of man, and eloquently lamented where they were both heading. Though his words were written more than 150 years ago, they live on today as a reminder of the need to preserve what is wild. Thoreau wrote, "&our wild apple is wild only like myself, perchance, who belong not to the aboriginal race here,...

Essayist, poet, and philosopher Henry David Thoreau (1817—62) ranks among America's foremost nature writers. The Concord, Massachusetts, native spent most of his life observing the natural world of New England. His thoughts on leading a simple, independent life remain a foundation of modern environmentalism, as captured in Walden, his best-known work. Canoeing in the Wilderness, the 1857 diary of a two-week sojourn in Maine, chronicles the author's...