Henry David Thoreau Biography

Ralph Waldo Emerson had a particularly strong influence on a fellow Harvard alumnus fourteen years his junior. Like Emerson, this young man was a natural critical thinker. 

Henry David Thoreau was born on July 12, 1817, in Concord, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard College in 1837. Over the next eight years, he worked alternately as a teacher and at his father’s pencil factory. During this period, his friendship with Emerson began and evolved into Emerson’s mentoring of Thoreau’s literary interests. 

Emerson introduced Thoreau to transcendentalism and many of the movement’s key intellectuals. It was Emerson who granted Thoreau access to land at Walden Pond where Thoreau built a cabin and embarked on his famous experiment recommended to him by his transcendentalist friend and poet Ellery Channing. On July 4, 1845, Thoreau began the two-year, two-month, and two-week venture that would prove historic.

On July 4, 1845, Thoreau began the two-year, two-month, and two-week venture that would prove historic. 

Thoreau used the time at Walden Pond to write his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, but that was not the focus of his stay. In Thoreau’s own words:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Thoreau’s experiment in solitude and simplicity, his extraordinary powers to observe and flow with nature, and his meditative capacity to lend intense meaning to it all provided substantial material for him. Nevertheless, he struggled to write about it.

While Thoreau was at Walden, Alexander von Humboldt’s first volume of Cosmos was published. It was an international best seller and Thoreau read and studied it sometime after leaving Walden Pond. Humboldt’s profoundly scientific yet penetratingly poetic view of nature flinted a spark in Thoreau and perhaps even lent him license to likewise weave science and poetic prose together.

Walden was published seven years after Thoreau left Walden Pond. Initially, it received only modest success. Over time, however, it would become revered as one of the classics of American literature, prove to be foundational to the American environmental movement, and influence scores of authors, artists, scientists, and politicians.

Bust of Henry David Thoreau by Walton Ricketson

Thoreau was also an ardent abolitionist. While at Walden he refused to pay overdue poll taxes, believing the Mexican-American War would result in the expansion of slavery. He spent one night in jail before an anonymous person paid Thoreau’s debt. Although his intended defiance was, therefore, cut short, the experience left a strong impact on him. It provided inspiration for a lecture Thoreau first delivered in January 1848 entitled “The Rights and Duties of the Individual in relation to Government.” The lecture was amended and published as “Resistance to Civil Government” or, as it has since been more commonly known, “Civil Disobedience.”

The essay would have a profound influence on actors of social change the world over. Many of the great peacemakers presented in this collection including, Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rachel Carson were inspired and influenced by this powerful work. Like ripples on a pond, their examples have influenced countless others.

Thoreau contracted tuberculosis as a teenager. The condition sporadically nagged him his whole life. In 1860, he developed bronchitis, precipitating a decline in health. He died on May 6, 1862. His last words were “Now comes good sailing.” He was buried in his family plot and later moved to Author’s Ridge in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts where he rests near the graves of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.