| American
author and naturalist, born in Concord, Mass., and graduated from
Harvard, 1837. Thoreau is considered one of the most
influential figures in American thought and literature. A
supreme individualist, he championed the human spirit against
materialism and social conformity. His most famous book, Walden
(1854), is an eloquent account of his experiment in near-solitary
living in close harmony with nature; it is also an expression of
his transcendentalist philosophy.
Thoreau grew up
in Concord and attended Harvard, where he was known as a serious
though unconventional scholar. During his Harvard years he
was exposed to the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who later
became his chief mentor and friend. After graduation,
Thoreau worked for a time in his father's pencil shop and taught
at a grammar school, but in 1841 he was invited to live in the
Emerson household, where he remained intermittently until
1843. He served as handyman and assistant to Emerson,
helping to edit and contributing poetry and prose to the
transcendentalist magazine, The Dial.
In 1845 Thoreau
built himself a small cabin on the shore of Walden Pond, near
Concord; there he remained for more than two years, "living
deep and sucking out all the marrow of life." Wishing
to lead a life free of materialistic pursuits, he supported
himself by growing vegetables and by surveying and doing odd jobs
in the nearby village. He devoted most of his time to
observing nature, reading, and writing, and he kept a detailed
journal of his observations, activities, and thoughts. It
was from this journal that he later distilled his masterpiece, Walden.
The journal, begun in 1837, was also the source of his first book,
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849), as well
as of his posthumously published Excursions (1863), The
Maine Woods (1864), Cape Cod (1865), and A Yankee in
Canada (1866).
One of Thoreau's
most important works, the essay "Civil Disobedience"
(1849), grew out of an overnight stay in prison as a result of his
conscientious refusal to pay a poll tax that supported the Mexican
War, which to Thoreau represented an effort to extend
slavery. Thoreau's advocacy of civil disobedience as a means
for the individual to protest those actions of his government that
he considers unjust has had a wide-ranging impact–on the British
Labour movement, the passive resistance independence movement led
by Gandhi in India, and the nonviolent civil-rights movement led
by Martin Luther King in the United States.
Thoreau is also
significant as a naturalist who emphasized the dynamic ecology of
the natural world. Above all, Thoreau's quiet, one-man
revolution in living at Walden has become a symbol of the willed
integrity of human beings, their inner freedom, and their ability
to build their own lives. Thoreau's writings, including his
journals, were published in 20 volumes in 1906.
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