Walden

von Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862) was an American poet, author, and transcendentalist who is best known for his book Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854). Thoreau was also an abolitionist, historian, philosopher, surveyor, naturalist, development critic and tax resister, and he contributed to the field of natural history, which would influence modern day environmentalism. He had hoped Walden would establish him as the leading spokesman for the American transcendentalist movement, but unfortunately he wasn't widely appreciated in his lifetime - his collected books, journals, essays, articles and poetry would eventually find a large audience during the 1900s. His book Walden would become particularly popular during the forced austerity of the Great Depression of the 1930s, and then again during the 1960s when conservationism, transcendentalism and many other isms swept through American culture.In Walden, Thoreau accounts for his two years spent in a little cabin near Walden Pond,...