Henry David Thoreau
Transcendentalist essayist and philosopher
Henry David Thoreau was a nineteenth-century American naturalist, essayist and philosopher. He wrote Walden, a book about living simply close to nature.
1 summary 23 min of listening
American Born 1817 in Concord Died 1862
Influenced by Charles Darwin, Ralph Waldo Emerson
About Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts, on July 12, 1817, and died on May 6, 1862. He graduated from Harvard University in 1837 and became a leading figure among the transcendentalists. His books, journals and poetry fill more than 20 volumes. Walden is his book about living simply close to nature, drawn from his time living in a hut at Walden Pond. His essay "Civil Disobedience" argues for individual resistance to an unjust state. He was also an abolitionist. He spent a night in jail after he declined to pay a poll tax, a stand against slavery and the Mexican war. His writing on natural history and philosophy anticipated ecology and environmental history. His ideas on civil disobedience later influenced Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.