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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Henry David Thoreau Biography THOREAU, Henry David (1817–62). An American naturalist and author, of French and Scotch extraction, born at Concord, Mass., where his father was a manufacturer of lead pencils. At this trade the younger Thoreau worked at intervals. He graduated from Harvard in 1837, and was for five or six years engaged in school teaching and tutoring in Concord and at Staten Island, N. Y. Preferring to live a life of contemplation, he abandoned teaching and proceeded, during the rest of his days, to demonstrate how simply and agreeably a man might live. He was for a time an inmate of Emerson's house, but his most characteristic act was his residence, from July, 1845, to September, 1847, in a hut on the shores of Walden Pond, a beautiful body of water on the outskirts of Concord. Here he lived, doing what little work was necessary to supply the necessaries of life, and devoting the major part of his time to the study of nature and to the society of friends. On leaving Walden he again lived with Emerson, 1847–48, and the years after 1849 were spent with his parents and sister at Concord. During his life at Walden Pond and elsewhere in Concord, he supported himself by odd jobs of gardening, land surveying, carpentering, etc., but without more exertion than he needed to keep himself in food and clothing. His leisure time he devoted to the study of nature, to the reading of Greek, Latin, French, and English classical literature, to excursions, to pondering metaphysical problems, and to friendly chat with his neighbors, by whom he was beloved. From 1837 till his death he kept a journal, and this furnished the source and basis of his writings, and gave them uniformity of character. Of the volumes which comprise his works in the standard Riverside edition (11 vols., with the Familiar Letters of Thoreau edited by F. B. Sanborn) but two appeared in his lifetime. The first of these, A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers (1849), is the narrative of a boating trip taken in August, 1839; it is full of admirable description and minute observation of nature, mingled with excursions into transcendental philosophy. The second book records the experiences, physical and moral, of his two years at Walden Pond: Walden, or, Life in the Woods (1854), perhaps his most popular volume, recognized as one of the most original and sincere productions in American letters and as one of the most genuine of woodland books. It gives a plain unaffected statement of the reasons for the author's life as a hermit, and an admirably specific account of the main details of that life. The other volumes, largely made up of material from his journal, and edited and published post-humously, are: Excursions (1863); The Maine Woods (1864); Cape Cod (1865); Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881); Summer (1884); Winter (1888); Autumn (1892); and Miscellanies (1894). In 1905 appeared The First and Last Journeys of Thoreau, lately discovered among his unpublished Journals and Manuscripts (ed. by F. B. Sanborn, Boston). A new and complete edition was published in 1906. Their publication indicated an increasing interest in Thoreau and a sense of the permanent value of his work. The literary quality of the writing was high; he had a marked gift for style, and wrote with great care and unfailing freshness. His best essays, to be found in the volumes entitled Miscellanies and Excursions, are perhaps not excelled in American literature, whether for substance or for style, and it may be doubted whether the work of any of his contemporaries is wearing as well. His poems are interesting, but occupy a minor place in his writings. The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XXII (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 233-234. |