Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) was an American essayist, poet and philosopher, born in Concord, Massachusetts, where he spent most of his short life. He studied at Harvard, worked for a time as a teacher and a pencil maker, and earned his living largely as a surveyor and handyman. He became part of the circle around Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalist movement. Between 1845 and 1847 he lived in a small cabin by Walden Pond, an experiment in simple living that gave rise to his best-known book, Walden. He also wrote essays on nature, walking and travel, and a famous essay on resisting unjust government, which came out of his refusal to pay a tax during a period when the United States supported slavery and war with Mexico. He kept a vast journal and died of tuberculosis at forty-four. His ideas on nature, simplicity and conscience have influenced writers, naturalists and reformers around the world.