Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau was born in 1817 in Concord, Massachusetts, where his family made pencils. He graduated from Harvard College in 1837 and taught school with his brother John, then worked in the family pencil business, as a surveyor and handyman. He became a friend of the writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, who encouraged his writing and introduced him to the Transcendentalists. In 1845 Thoreau built a small cabin on land Emerson owned by Walden Pond, near Concord, and lived there for two years and two months, growing beans, reading, writing and observing nature, to see what life was like when reduced to its essentials. His book Walden (1854) describes the experiment. In 1846 he spent a night in jail for refusing to pay a poll tax, in protest against slavery and the Mexican–American War; his essay later known as Civil Disobedience explained his reasons and influenced later figures such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. He opposed slavery and kept detailed journals of nature. He died of tuberculosis in Concord in 1862.

Henry David Thoreau is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: A Transcendentalist who drew on many religious traditions; he did not enter the church as a profession. Source: Wikipedia