Henry David Thoreau was born July 12, 1817 - "just in the nick of
time," as he wrote, for the "flowering of New England," when the
area boasted such eminent citizens as Emerson, Hawthorne, Whitman
and Melville. Raised in genteel poverty - his father made and sold
pencils from their home - Thoreau enjoyed, nevertheless, a fine
education, graduating from Harvard in 1837. In that year, the young
thinker met Emerson and formed the close friendship that became the
most significant of his life. Guided, sponsored and aided by his
famous older colleague, Thoreau began to publish essays in The
Dial, exhibiting the radical originality that would gain the
disdain of his contemporaries but the great admiration of all
succeeding generations.
In 1845, Thoreau began the living experiment for which he is most
famous. During his two years and two months in the shack beside the
New England pond, he wrote his first important work, A Week on the
Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849), was arrested for refusing to
pay his poll tax to a government that supported slavery (recorded
in "Civil Disobedience") and gathered the material for his
masterpiece, Walden (1854). He spent the rest of his life writing
and lecturing and died, relatively unappreciated, in 1862.
"This book is like an invitation to life's dance."
--E. B. White
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