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Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 - May 6, 1862) was a noted American author and philosopher who is most famous for Walden and his treatise on civil disobedience.
He was born in Concord, Massachusetts and graduated from Harvard in 1837.
Hailed by some as the first environmentalist, Thoreau was a profound philosopher on the human condition. His essay Civil Disobedience was inspirational for Tolstoy and Mohandas Gandhi.
He decided to become a writer and moved to New York Cty. His brother died in 1842 and Thoreau returned to Concord in 1843.
Thoreau embarked on the two-year experiment in simple living on July 4, 1845 when he moved to the second growth forest around the shores of beautiful Walden Pond, not far from his friends and family in Concord. He left Walden Pond on September 6, 1847 to live with his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson and Emerson's family in Concord, Massachusetts. Thoreau refused to pay taxes in 1846 bassed on his oppositoin of the mexican war, and was later jailed. He described this event in his essay entitled Civil Disobedience
Walden, detailing the two years and two months he spent at Walden Pond, was published in 1854.
At various times, Thoreau earned a living as a teacher or a labourer, and by working at his family's pencil factory. He also invented a machine which simplified production while cutting manufacturing costs.
He was a student and friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson and a Transcendentalist (see Transcendentalism).
Thoreau traveled to Cape Cod, Agiokochuk, and Mt. Katahdin in Maine. The trips to Maine included Ktaadn, Chesuncook and The East Branch (Penobscot River).
Thoreau died in the city of his birth, Concord, and below is a picture of Thoreau's grave in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery (not the famous Sleepy Hollow Cemetery) of Concord, Massachusetts:
Bibliography
- "A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers" (1839)
- "Civil Disobedience" (1849)
- "Slavery in Massachusetts" (1854)
- "Walden" (1854)
- "A Plea for Captain John Brown" (1860)
- "Excursions" (1863)
- "The Maine Woods" (1864)
- "Cape Cod" (1865)
- "Early Spring in Massachusetts" (1881)
- "Summer" (1884)
- "Winter" (1888)
- "Autumn" (1892)
- "Miscellanies" (1894)
- "The First and Last Journeys of Thoreau", lately discovered among his unpublished Journals and Manuscripts (1905)