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Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts, and
spent most of his life in and around that town. Thoreau was
an outspoken abolitionist, and during his lifetime his most
widely read works were such antislavery tracts as "Slavery
in Massachusetts" and "A Plea for Captain John Brown."
Most readers, though, remember Thoreau as a naturalist. His
most famous book, Walden (1854), records the two
years he spent living in a self-crafted cabin beside Emerson's
Walden Pond. The Walden experiment reflected the greater philosophy
of Thoreau's life: he believed that people should not be driven
by materialistic desires but should live according to their
needs, simplifying their life-styles rather than earning money
to support lavish and ostentatious show. Thoreau worked from
time to time in his father's pencil factory, but the dust
from the graphite aggravated Thoreau's tuberculosis, and he
died a few years after taking over the family business. After
his death, passages about nature were culled from his journal
writings and printed in magazines; the journals were published
as a whole in 1906. To this day, Thoreau remains among the
most important and challenging of American nature writers,
philosophers, and social critics. |
