Walden and Civil Disobedience

Description

Henry David Thoreau's masterworkWaldenis a collection of his reflections on life and society. In 1845, he moved to a cabin that he built with his own hands along the shores of Walden Pond in Massachusetts. Henry David Thoreau's masterwork Walden is a collection of his reflections on life and society. In 1845, he 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 until you adopt such a lifestyle-and only then can you reenter society, as an enlightened being. These simple but profound musings-as well as 'Civil Disobedience,' his protest against the government's interference with civil liberty-have inspired many to embrace his philosophy of individualism and love of nature. More than a century and a half later, his message is more timely than ever. With an Introduction by W.S. Merwin and a New Afterword by William Howarth

Henry David Thoreau was born in 1817 in Concord, Massachusetts, the town where he would live for most of his life. Along with Ralph Waldo Emerson, he is the most famous of the American Transcendentalists, a group of philosophical thinkers who frequently explored the relationship between human beings and the natural world. He was educated at Harvard, and over the course of his life took on a number of different occupations, including lead-pencil maker, schoolteacher, and surveyor. Thoreau was outspokenly critical of the American government, fervently opposed to slavery, and an advocate of passive resistance. Whilst Walden (1854) is his best known work, his 1849 essay 'Civil Disobedience' has inspired non-violent political activists the world over, including Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr, and his nature writings are considered ground-breaking works in ecology. He died in his hometown of Concord in 1862. Henry David Thoreau (1817-62) was born in Concord Massachusetts and educated at Harvard. He became a follower and a friend of Emerson, and described himself as a mystic and a transcendentalist. Although he published only two books in his lifetime, Walden is regarded as a literary masterpeice and one of the most significant books of the 19th century.