View source for Henry David Thoreau

{{Short description|American philosopher (1817–1862)}}
{{redirect|Thoreau}}
{{Use American English|date=March 2026}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=May 2025}}
{{Infobox philosopher
|region           = [[Western philosophy]]
|era              = [[19th-century philosophy]]
|image            = Benjamin D. Maxham - Henry David Thoreau - Restored.jpg
|caption          = Thoreau in 1856
|name             = Henry David Thoreau
|birth_name       = David Henry Thoreau
|birth_date       = {{birth date|1817|07|12}}
|birth_place      = [[Concord, Massachusetts]], U.S.
|death_date       = {{death date and age|1862|05|06|1817|07|12}}
|death_place      = Concord, Massachusetts, U.S.
|signature        = Henry D Thoreau signature.svg
|school_tradition = [[Transcendentalism]]<ref name=":6"/>
|alma_mater       = [[Harvard College]]
|main_interests   = {{hlist|Ethics|poetry|religion|politics|[[biology]]|philosophy|history}}
|notable_ideas    = {{hlist|[[Abolitionism in the United States|Abolitionism]]|[[tax resistance]]|[[development criticism]]|[[civil disobedience]]|[[conscientious objector|conscientious objection]]|[[direct action]]|[[environmentalism]]|[[simple living]]|[[Economic materialism]]|[[Welfarism]]|[[Media consumption]]|[[Humanism]]|[[Naturalism (philosophy)|Empirical Naturalism]]}}
}}
'''Henry David Thoreau''' (born '''David Henry Thoreau'''; July 12, 1817{{snd}}May 6, 1862) was an American [[naturalist]], essayist, poet, and philosopher.<ref>{{cite web |title=Henry David Thoreau {{!}} Biography & Works |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-David-Thoreau |website=Encyclopædia Britannica |language=en |access-date=July 8, 2019 |archive-date=March 16, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190316155013/https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-David-Thoreau |url-status=live }}</ref> A leading [[Transcendentalism|transcendentalist]],<ref>Howe, Daniel Walker, ''What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848''. {{ISBN|978-0195078947}}, p. 623.</ref> he is best known for his book ''[[Walden]]'', a reflection upon [[simple living]] in natural surroundings, and his essay "[[Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)|Civil Disobedience]]" (originally published as "Resistance to Civil Government"), an argument in favor of citizen disobedience against an unjust state.

Thoreau's books, journals, and poetry amount to more than 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions are his [[nature writing|writings on natural history]] and philosophy, in which he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and [[environmental history]], two sources of modern-day environmentalism. His [[literary language|literary]] style interweaves close observation of nature, personal experience, pointed [[rhetoric]], [[symbol]]ic meanings, and historical lore, while displaying a poetic sensibility, philosophical [[Asceticism|austerity]], and attention to practical detail.<ref name="ReferenceA">Thoreau, Henry David. ''A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers''&nbsp;/ ''Walden''&nbsp;/ ''The Maine Woods''&nbsp;/ ''Cape Cod''. Library of America. {{ISBN|0940450275}}.</ref> He was also deeply interested in the idea of survival in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay; at the same time he advocated abandoning waste and [[illusion]] to discover life's true essential needs.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>

Thoreau was a lifelong [[Abolitionism in the United States|abolitionist]], delivering lectures that attacked the [[fugitive slave laws|fugitive slave law]] while praising the writings of [[Wendell Phillips]] and defending the abolitionist [[John Brown (abolitionist)|John Brown]]. Thoreau's philosophy of [[civil disobedience]] later influenced the political thoughts and actions of notable figures such as [[Leo Tolstoy]], [[Mahatma Gandhi]], and [[Martin Luther King Jr.]]<ref name=":2"/>

Sometimes, Thoreau is retrospectively referred to as an [[Anarchism|anarchist]],<ref>Seligman, Edwin Robert Anderson; Johnson, Alvin Saunders, eds. (1937). ''Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences'', p. 12.</ref><ref>Gross, David, ed. ''The Price of Freedom: Political Philosophy from Thoreau's Journals''. p. 8. {{ISBN|978-1434805522}}. "The Thoreau of these journals distrusted doctrine, and, though it is accurate I think to call him an anarchist, he was by no means doctrinaire in this either."</ref> but he may be more properly regarded as a ''[[Precursors to anarchism|proto-anarchist]]''.

==Pronunciation of his name==
[[Amos Bronson Alcott]] (who wrote in 1860 that "He is rightly named Thorough") and Thoreau's aunt each wrote that "Thoreau" is pronounced like the word ''thorough'', pronounced as {{IPAc-en|ˈ|θ|ʌr|oʊ}} {{respell|THURR|oh}} in [[General American]], but more precisely as {{IPAc-en|ˈ|θ|ɔːr|oʊ}} {{respell|THAWR|oh}} in 19th century New England.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://thoreau.eserver.org/pronounce |title=THUR-oh or Thor-OH? And How Do We Know? |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20170323203856/http://thoreau.eserver.org/pronounce |archivedate=2017-03-23 |work=Thoreau Reader }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/patc/walden/ |work=Thoreau's Walden |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20131030102741/http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/patc/walden/ |archivedate=2013-10-30 |title=Pronouncing Thoreau |first=Jill |last=Kaufman |date=2002-08-05 }}</ref><ref name=NYTimes2026/>

In 1918, [[Edward Waldo Emerson]] wrote: "We always called my friend Thórow, the h sounded, and accent on the first syllable."<ref name=NYTimes2026/><ref>{{cite web |title=note on pronouncing the name |url=http://www.walden.org/Thoreau#Name |work=The Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20190727140857/https://www.walden.org/thoreau/#Name |archivedate=2019-07-27 }}</ref>

In the early 20th century, a resurgence in foreign interest in Thoreau's work caused people to assume that the name was of foreign origin,<ref name=NYTimes2026>{{cite web |last=Lyall |first=Sarah |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/28/books/review/thoreau-pronunciation-documentary.html |title=Rethinking Thoreau: We've Been Mispronouncing His Name for Centuries |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=2026-03-28 |accessdate=2026-03-28 |quote=For instance, there’s an 1860 journal entry from Thoreau’s neighbor Bronson Alcott, the father of Louisa May Alcott. 'Comes Thoreau and sups with us,' Alcott wrote. 'He is rightly named Thorough … the pervading Thor, the sturdy sensibility and force in things.' And in a 1918 letter from Edward Emerson, son of Thoreau’s friend Ralph Waldo Emerson: 'We always called my friend Thórow, the h sounded, and accent on the first syllable,' he wrote.... When Thoreau died, in 1862, his preferred pronunciation reigned supreme, Walls said. But matters were complicated by a surge of foreign interest in his writing in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.... The foreign attention sparked a renewal of interest back in the United States, creating a (false, as it turned out) assumption among new audiences about how to pronounce his name, based on the spelling. }}</ref> leading modern-day [[American English]] speakers to commonly (mis)pronounce the name {{IPAc-en|θ|ə|ˈ|r|oʊ}} {{respell|thə|ROH}}, with the stress on the second syllable.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|title=Thoreau|dictionary=Dictionary.com|date=2013|url=http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/thoreau|access-date=2013-02-17 |archive-date=2021-08-27 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210827194246/https://www.dictionary.com/browse/thoreau|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite encyclopedia |last=Wells |first=J.C. |date=1990 |title=Pronunciation Dictionary |at=s.v. "Thoreau" |location=Essex, UK |publisher=Longman }}</ref>

==Physical appearance==
Thoreau had a distinctive appearance, with a nose that he called his "most prominent feature".<ref>{{Cite book|title=Cape Cod|last=Thoreau|first=Henry David|year=1865|chapter=Chapter 10 A. Provincetown|chapter-url=http://thoreau.eserver.org:80/capecd10.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170822113030/http://thoreau.eserver.org/capecd10.html|archive-date=August 22, 2017|url-status=dead|access-date=February 13, 2007}}</ref> Of his appearance and disposition, [[Ellery Channing]] wrote:<ref>{{cite web|url=http://thoreau.eserver.org/images.html|title=The Days of Henry Thoreau|author=Harding, Walter|work=thoreau.eserver.org|access-date=February 9, 2015|archive-date=November 14, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161114183837/http://thoreau.eserver.org/images.html|url-status=live}}</ref>
<blockquote>His face, once seen, could not be forgotten. The features were quite marked: the nose [[Aquiline nose|aquiline]] or very Roman, like one of the portraits of [[Julius Caesar|Caesar]] (more like a beak, as was said); large overhanging brows above the deepest set blue eyes that could be seen, in certain lights, and in others gray,—eyes expressive of all shades of feeling, but never weak or near-sighted; the forehead not unusually broad or high, full of concentrated energy and purpose; the mouth with prominent lips, pursed up with meaning and thought when silent, and giving out when open with the most varied and unusual instructive sayings.</blockquote>

==Life==
===Early life and education, 1817–1837===
[[File:Wheeler-Minot  Farmhouse, Concord  MA.jpg|thumb|Thoreau's birthplace, the [[Wheeler-Minot Farmhouse]] in [[Concord, Massachusetts]]]]

Henry David Thoreau was born David Henry Thoreau<ref>Nelson, Randy F. (1981). ''The Almanac of American Letters''. Los Altos, California: William Kaufmann. p. 51. {{ISBN|086576008X}}.</ref> in [[Concord, Massachusetts]], into the "modest [[New England]] family"<ref name="McElroy">{{cite web |author1=Wendy McElroy |author1-link=Wendy McElroy |title=Henry David Thoreau and 'Civil Disobedience' |url=https://archive.lewrockwell.com/mcelroy/mcelroy86.html |website=[[LewRockwell.com]] |access-date=May 21, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150620145129/http://archive.lewrockwell.com/mcelroy/mcelroy86.html |archive-date=June 20, 2015 |date=July 30, 2005 |url-status=live}}</ref> of John Thoreau, a pencil maker, and Cynthia Dunbar. His father was of French Protestant descent.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Uoi8eRYMXV4C&q=protestant|isbn = 978-0822558934|title = Henry David Thoreau: A Biography|date = 2006|publisher = Twenty-First Century Books}}</ref> His paternal grandfather had been born on the UK [[crown dependency]] island of [[Jersey]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=maold&id=I18020|title=RootsWeb's WorldConnect Project: Ancestors of Mary Ann Gillam and Stephen Old|access-date=September 2, 2008|archive-date=October 16, 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081016141209/http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=maold&id=I18020|url-status=live}}</ref> His maternal Scottish-American grandfather, Asa Dunbar, led [[Harvard University|Harvard's]] 1766 student "[[Butter rebellion]]",<ref>[https://www.brown.edu/Students/Alpha_Delta_Phi/history/fraternities.php History of the Fraternity System] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090704122642/http://www.brown.edu/Students/Alpha_Delta_Phi/history/fraternities.php |date=July 4, 2009 }}.</ref> the first recorded student protest in the American colonies.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.trivialibrary.com/c/first-student-protest-in-the-united-states.htm|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191215210840/http://www.trivialibrary.com/c/first-student-protest-in-the-united-states.htm|url-status=dead|archive-date=December 15, 2019|title=First Student Protest in the United States}}</ref> David Henry was named after his recently deceased paternal uncle, David Thoreau. He began to call himself Henry David after he finished college; he never petitioned to make a legal name change.<ref>[http://www.barnesandnoble.com/writers/writerdetails.asp?z=y&cid=1019508#bio Henry David Thoreau] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061031164847/http://www.barnesandnoble.com/writers/writerdetails.asp?z=y&cid=1019508 |date=October 31, 2006 }}, "Meet the Writers." Barnes & Noble.com</ref>

He had two older siblings, [[Helen Thoreau|Helen]] and John Jr., and a younger sister, [[Sophia Thoreau]].<ref>[http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/thoreau/ Biography of Henry David Thoreau] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190806235504/https://www.americanpoems.com/poets/thoreau/ |date=August 6, 2019 }}. americanpoems.com</ref> None of the children married.<ref name=":7">{{Cite web |date=September 19, 2020 |title=Helen and Sophia Thoreau, Henry David's Amazing Sisters |url=https://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/helen-sophia-thoreau-henrys-amazing-sisters/ |access-date=May 15, 2022 |website=New England Historical Society |language=en-US}}</ref> Helen (1812–1849) died at age 37,<ref name=":7" /> from [[tuberculosis]]. John Jr. (1814–1842) died at age 27,<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Blanding |first=Thomas |date=1980 |title=Beans, Baked and Half-Baked (13) |url=https://archive.org/details/concordsaunter1980151unse/page/16/mode/1up |journal=The Concord Saunterer |volume=15 |issue=1 |pages=16–22 |issn=1068-5359}}</ref> of [[tetanus]] after cutting himself while shaving.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Myerson |first=Joel |date=1994 |title=Barzillai Frost's Funeral Sermon on the Death of John Thoreau Jr. |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3817844 |journal=Huntington Library Quarterly |volume=57 |issue=4 |pages=367–376 |doi=10.2307/3817844 |jstor=3817844 |issn=0018-7895|url-access=subscription }}</ref> Henry David (1817–1862) died at age 44, of tuberculosis.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Thoreau's Life {{!}} The Thoreau Society |url=https://www.thoreausociety.org/life-legacy |access-date=May 16, 2022 |website=www.thoreausociety.org}}</ref> Sophia (1819–1876) survived him by 14 years, dying at age 56,<ref name=":7" /> of tuberculosis.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Herrick |first=Gerri L. |date=1978 |title=Sophia Thoreau – "Cara Sophia" |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23393396 |journal=The Concord Saunterer |volume=13 |issue=3 |pages=5–12 |jstor=23393396 |issn=1068-5359}}</ref>

He studied at [[Harvard College]] between 1833 and 1837. He lived in [[Hollis Hall]]<ref>{{Cite web |last=Roman |first=John |date=June 24, 2021 |title=The Homes of Henry David Thoreau |url=http://www.electrummagazine.com/2021/06/the-homes-of-henry-david-thoreau/ |access-date=May 16, 2022 |website=Electrum Magazine}}</ref> and took courses in [[rhetoric]], classics, philosophy, mathematics, and science.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau |url=https://thoreau.library.ucsb.edu/thoreau_life.html |access-date=May 16, 2022 |website=thoreau.library.ucsb.edu}}</ref> He was a member of the Institute of 1770<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.thoreausociety.org/_membership.htm |title=Organizations Thoreau Joined |publisher=Thoreau Society |access-date=June 26, 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130503192646/http://www.thoreausociety.org/_membership.htm |archive-date=May 3, 2013 }}</ref> (now the [[Hasty Pudding Club]]). According to legend, Thoreau refused to pay the five-dollar fee (approximately {{inflation|US|5|1840|fmt=eq}}) for a Harvard master's diploma, which he described thus: [[Harvard College]] offered it to graduates "who proved their physical worth by being alive three years after graduating, and their saving, earning, or inheriting quality or condition by having Five Dollars to give the college".<ref>"Thoreau's Diploma". ''American Literature''. Vol. 17, May 1945. pp. 174–175.</ref> He commented, "Let every sheep keep its own skin",<ref>{{cite web |author=Walter Harding |url=http://www.walden.org/Institute/thoreau/about2/H/WalterHarding/LiveYourOwnLife.htm |title=Live Your Own Life |work=Geneseo Summer Compass |date=June 4, 1984 |access-date=November 21, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060129085602/http://www.walden.org/Institute/thoreau/about2/H/WalterHarding/LiveYourOwnLife.htm |archive-date=January 29, 2006|author-link=Walter Harding }}</ref> a reference to the tradition of using [[Sheepskin (material)|sheepskin]] [[vellum]] for diplomas.

[[Wheeler-Minot Farmhouse|Thoreau's birthplace]] still exists on Virginia Road in Concord. The house has been restored by the Thoreau Farm Trust,<ref>{{cite web|title=Thoreau Farm|work=thoreaufarm.org|url=http://thoreaufarm.org/|access-date=April 23, 2013|archive-date=October 30, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191030230744/https://thoreaufarm.org/|url-status=live}}</ref> a nonprofit organization, and is now open to the public.

===Return to Concord, 1837–1844===
The traditional professions open to college graduates—law, the church, business, medicine—did not interest Thoreau,<ref name="sattelmeyer">Sattelmeyer, Robert (1988). ''Thoreau's Reading: A Study in Intellectual History with Bibliographical Catalogue''. [http://www.walden.org/Institute/thoreau/about2/S/Sattelmeyer_Robert/Reading2.pdf Chapter 2] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150908031952/http://www.walden.org/Institute/thoreau/about2/S/Sattelmeyer_Robert/Reading2.pdf |date=September 8, 2015 }}. Princeton: Princeton University Press.</ref>{{Rp|25}} so in 1835 he took a leave of absence from Harvard, during which he taught at a school in [[Canton, Massachusetts]], living for two years at an earlier version of today's [[Concord's Colonial Inn|Colonial Inn]] in Concord. His grandfather owned the earliest of the three buildings that were later combined.<ref name=hudson311>''The History of Concord, Massachusetts, Vol. I, Colonial Concord, Volume 1'', Alfred Sereno Hudson (1904), p. 311</ref> After he graduated in 1837, Thoreau joined the faculty of the Concord public school, but he resigned after a few weeks rather than administer [[corporal punishment]].<ref name="sattelmeyer"/>{{Rp|25}} He and his brother John then opened the Concord Academy, a grammar school in Concord, in 1838.<!-- Concord Academy (1822–1863) is a different institution than Concord Academy (est. 1922). --><ref name="sattelmeyer" />{{Rp|25}} They introduced several progressive concepts, including nature walks and visits to local shops and businesses. The school closed when John became fatally ill from [[tetanus]] in 1842 after cutting himself while shaving.<ref>Dean, Bradley P. "[http://thoreau.eserver.org/wfchron.html A Thoreau Chronology] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170620133904/http://thoreau.eserver.org/wfchron.html |date=June 20, 2017 }}".</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|jstor=3817844 |title=Barzillai Frost's Funeral Sermon on the Death of John Thoreau Jr. |journal=Huntington Library Quarterly |volume=57 |issue=4 |pages=367–376 |date=1994 |author=Myerson, Joel|doi=10.2307/3817844 }}</ref> He died in Henry's arms.<ref>Woodlief, Ann. "[http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/thoreau/ Henry David Thoreau] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191009005716/https://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/thoreau/ |date=October 9, 2019 }}".</ref>

Upon graduation Thoreau returned home to Concord, where he met [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]] through a mutual friend.<ref name=McElroy/> Emerson, who was 14 years his senior, took a paternal and at times patron-like interest in Thoreau, advising the young man and introducing him to a circle of local writers and thinkers, including [[William Ellery Channing (poet)|Ellery Channing]], [[Margaret Fuller]], [[Amos Bronson Alcott|Bronson Alcott]], and [[Nathaniel Hawthorne]] and his son [[Julian Hawthorne]], who was a boy at the time.

Emerson urged Thoreau to contribute essays and poems to a quarterly periodical, ''[[The Dial]]'', and lobbied the editor, Margaret Fuller, to publish those writings. Thoreau's first essay published in ''The Dial'' was "Aulus Persius Flaccus",<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.walden.org/documents/file/Library/About%20Thoreau/D/Dial/AulusPersiusFlaccus.pdf|title=Aulus Persius Flaccus|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120925021512/http://www.walden.org/documents/file/Library/About%20Thoreau/D/Dial/AulusPersiusFlaccus.pdf|archive-date=September 25, 2012|url-status=dead}}</ref> an essay on the Roman poet and satirist, in July 1840.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.walden.org/Library/About_Thoreau's_Life_and_Writings:_The_Research_Collections/The_Dial |title='The Dial' |publisher=Walden.org |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151018151944/http://www.walden.org/Library/About_Thoreau%27s_Life_and_Writings%3A_The_Research_Collections/The_Dial |archive-date=October 18, 2015 }}</ref> It consisted of revised passages from his journal, which he had begun keeping at Emerson's suggestion. The first journal entry, on October 22, 1837, reads, {{"'}}What are you doing now?' he asked. 'Do you keep a journal?' So I make my first entry to-day."<ref>Thoreau, Henry David (2007). ''I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau''. Jeffrey S. Cramer, ed. New Haven: Yale University Press. p. 1.</ref>

Thoreau was a philosopher of nature and its relation to the human condition. In his early years he followed [[transcendentalism]], a loose and eclectic [[Idealism|idealist]] philosophy advocated by Emerson, Fuller, and Alcott. They held that an ideal spiritual state transcends, or goes beyond, the physical and empirical, and that one achieves that insight via personal intuition rather than religious doctrine. In their view, Nature is the outward sign of inward spirit, expressing the "radical correspondence of visible things and human thoughts", as Emerson wrote in ''Nature'' (1836).

[[File:Thoreau1967stamp.jpg|thumb|right|1967 U.S. postage stamp honoring Thoreau, designed by [[Leonard Baskin]]]]

On April 18, 1841, Thoreau moved in with the [[Ralph Waldo Emerson House|Emersons]].<ref name="Cheever">Cheever, Susan (2006). ''American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau; Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work''. Detroit: Thorndike Press. p. 90. {{ISBN|078629521X}}.</ref> There, from 1841 to 1844, he served as the children's tutor; he was also an editorial assistant, repairman and gardener. For a few months in 1843, he moved to the home of William Emerson on [[Staten Island]],<ref>{{cite book |title=The Life of Henry David Thoreau |last=Salt |first=H.S. |date=1890 |publisher=Richard Bentley & Son |location=London |url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_t_0RAAAAYAAJ |page=[https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_t_0RAAAAYAAJ/page/n83 69]}}</ref> and tutored the family's sons while seeking contacts among literary men and journalists in the city who might help publish his writings, including his future literary representative [[Horace Greeley]].<ref>Sanborn, F.B., ed. (1906). ''The Writings of Henry David Thoreau''. Vol. VI, ''Familiar Letters''. [http://www.walden.org/Institute/thoreau/writings/Writings1906/06FamiliarLetters/Years%20of%20Discipline.pdf Chapter 1, "Years of Discipline"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150907235501/http://www.walden.org/Institute/thoreau/writings/Writings1906/06FamiliarLetters/Years%20of%20Discipline.pdf |date=September 7, 2015 }}. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.</ref>{{Rp|68}}

Thoreau returned to Concord and worked in his family's [[pencil]] factory, which he would continue to do alongside his writing and other work for most of his adult life. He resurrected the process of making good pencils with inferior [[graphite]] by using clay as a binder.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/pencilhistoryofd00petr|url-access=registration|title=The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance|last=Petroski|first=Henry|publisher=Knopf|year=1992|isbn=978-0679734154|location=New York|pages=[https://archive.org/details/pencilhistoryofd00petr/page/104 104]–125}}</ref> The process of mixing graphite and clay, known as the Conté process, had been first patented by [[Nicolas-Jacques Conté]] in 1795. Thoreau made profitable use of a graphite source found in [[New Hampshire]] that had been purchased in 1821 by his uncle, Charles Dunbar. The company's other source of graphite had been [[Tantiusques]], a mine operated by Native Americans in [[Sturbridge, Massachusetts]]. Later, Thoreau converted the pencil factory to produce plumbago, a name for graphite at the time, which was used in the [[electrotyping]] process.<ref>Conrad, Randall. (Fall 2005). [http://thoreau.eserver.org/pencils.html "Machine in the Wetland: Re-imagining Thoreau's Plumbago-Grinder"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070609102739/http://thoreau.eserver.org/pencils.html |date=June 9, 2007 }}. ''[http://www.thoreausociety.org/_activities_tsb.htm Thoreau Society Bulletin] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071223191911/http://www.thoreausociety.org/_activities_tsb.htm |date=December 23, 2007 }}'' 253.</ref>

Once back in Concord, Thoreau went through a restless period. In April 1844 he and his friend Edward Hoar accidentally set a fire that consumed {{convert|300|acre|ha|-1|abbr=off}} of Walden Woods.<ref>[http://www.calliope.org/thoreau/thorotime.html ''A Chronology of Thoreau's Life, with Events of the Times''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160213001457/http://www.calliope.org/thoreau/thorotime.html |date=February 13, 2016 }}. The Thoreau Project, Calliope Film Resources. Accessed June 11, 2007.</ref>

==="Civil Disobedience" and the Walden years, 1845–1850===
[[File:Thoreau sites in Walden Pond.svg|thumb|left|Thoreau sites at Walden Pond]]

{{blockquote|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. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.| Henry David Thoreau, "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For", in ''[[Walden]]''<ref>''Grammardog Guide to Walden''. Grammardog. p. 25. {{ISBN|1608570843}}.</ref>}}

Thoreau felt a need to concentrate and work more on his writing. In 1845, [[William Ellery Channing (poet)|Ellery Channing]] told Thoreau, "Go out upon that, build yourself a hut, & there begin the grand process of devouring yourself alive. I see no other alternative, no other hope for you."{{sfn|Packer|2007|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=FBHgfLqH_RUC&pg=PA183 183]}} Thus, on July 4, 1845, Thoreau embarked on a two-year experiment in [[simple living]], moving to a small house he had built on land owned by Emerson in a [[secondary forest|second growth forest]] around the shores of [[Walden Pond]], having had a request to build a hut on [[Flints Pond]], near that of his friend [[Charles Stearns Wheeler]], denied by the landowners due to the [[Fairhaven Bay]] incident.<ref name=":02">{{Cite web |title=Flint's Pond |url=https://lincolnconservation.org/tws_holding/flints-pond/ |access-date=May 6, 2023 |publisher=Lincoln Land Conservation Trust and Rural Land Foundation |language=en-US}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Meltzer |first=Milton |title=Henry David Thoreau: A Biography |publisher=Twenty-First Century Books |year=2006 |isbn=978-0822558934 |pages=23}}</ref> The house was in "a pretty pasture and woodlot" of {{convert|14|acre|ha|1|abbr=off}} that Emerson had bought,<ref>Richardson. ''Emerson: The Mind on Fire''. p. 399.</ref> {{convert|1+1/2|mi|km|round=0.5|abbr=off|sp=us}} from his family home.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.google.com/maps/search/concord+mass/@42.449808,-71.342769,15z?dg=dbrw&newdg=1 |title=Google Maps |access-date=October 13, 2018|archive-date=January 25, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200125151513/https://www.google.com/maps/search/concord+mass/@42.449808,-71.342769,15z?dg=dbrw&newdg=1 |url-status=live}}</ref> Whilst there, he wrote his only extended piece of literary criticism, "[[Thomas Carlyle and His Works]]".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Gravett |first=Sharon L. |date=1995 |title=Carlyle's Demanding Companion: Henry David Thoreau |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/44946086 |journal=Carlyle Studies Annual |publisher=Saint Joseph's University Press |issue=15 |pages=21–31 |jstor=44946086 |url-access=registration }}</ref>

[[File:Walden Thoreau.jpg|thumb|Original title page of ''Walden'', with an illustration from a drawing by Thoreau's sister Sophia]]

On July 24 or July 25, 1846, Thoreau ran into the local [[tax collector]], Sam Staples, who asked him to pay six years of delinquent [[Poll tax (United States)|poll taxes]]. Thoreau refused because of his opposition to the [[Mexican–American War]] and [[Slavery in the United States|slavery]], and he spent a night in jail because of this refusal. The next day Thoreau was freed when someone, likely to have been his aunt, paid the tax, against his wishes.<ref name=":2">Rosenwald, Lawrence. "[http://thoreau.eserver.org/theory.html The Theory, Practice and Influence of Thoreau's Civil Disobedience]". William Cain, ed. (2006). ''A Historical Guide to Henry David Thoreau''. Cambridge: Oxford University Press. {{Webarchive|url=https://archive.today/20131014012153/http://thoreau.eserver.org/theory.html|date=October 14, 2013|title=Archived}}</ref> The experience had a strong effect on Thoreau. In January and February 1848, he delivered lectures on "The Rights and Duties of the Individual in relation to Government",<ref>Thoreau, H.D., letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson, February 23, 1848.</ref> explaining his tax resistance at the [[Concord Lyceum]]. Bronson Alcott attended the lecture, writing in his journal on January 26:

{{blockquote|Heard Thoreau's lecture before the Lyceum on the relation of the individual to the State—an admirable statement of the rights of the individual to self-government, and an attentive audience. His allusions to the Mexican War, to Mr. [[Samuel Hoar|Hoar]]'s expulsion from Carolina, his own imprisonment in Concord Jail for refusal to pay his tax, Mr. Hoar's payment of mine when taken to prison for a similar refusal, were all pertinent, well considered, and reasoned. I took great pleasure in this deed of Thoreau's.|Bronson Alcott|''Journals''<ref>Alcott, Bronson (1938). ''Journals''. Boston: Little, Brown.</ref>}}

Thoreau revised the lecture into an essay titled "Resistance to Civil Government", commonly known as "[[Civil Disobedience (essay)|Civil Disobedience]]". It was published by [[Elizabeth Peabody]] in the ''Aesthetic Papers'' in May 1849. Thoreau had taken up a version of the principle enunciated by [[Percy Shelley]] in his political poem "[[The Mask of Anarchy]]" (1819), which begins with powerful images of the unjust forms of authority of his time and then imagines the stirrings of a radically new form of [[social action]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.morrissociety.org/JWMS/SP94.10.4.Nichols.pdf |title=Morrissociety.org |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110105232938/http://www.morrissociety.org/JWMS/SP94.10.4.Nichols.pdf |archive-date=January 5, 2011 }}</ref>

At Walden Pond, Thoreau completed a first draft of ''[[A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers]]'', an [[elegy]] to his brother John, describing their trip to the [[White Mountains (New Hampshire)|White Mountains]] in 1839. Thoreau did not find a publisher for the book and instead printed 1,000 copies at his own expense; fewer than 300 were sold.<ref name="Cheever" />{{Rp|234}} He self-published on the advice of Emerson, using Emerson's publisher, Munroe, who did little to publicize the book.

{{multiple image
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| caption2      = Replica of Thoreau's cabin and a statue of him near Walden Pond
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In August 1846, Thoreau briefly left Walden to make a trip to [[Mount Katahdin]] in [[Maine]], a journey that was later recorded in "Ktaadn", the first part of ''The Maine Woods''.

Thoreau left Walden Pond on September 6, 1847.<ref name="Cheever" />{{Rp|244}} At Emerson's request, he immediately moved back to the Emerson house to help Emerson's wife, Lidian, manage the household while her husband was on an extended trip to Europe.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.thoreausociety.org/_news_abouthdt.htm |title=Thoreausociety.org |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101129085846/http://thoreausociety.org/_news_abouthdt.htm |archive-date=November 29, 2010 }}</ref> Over several years, as he worked to pay off his debts, he continuously revised the manuscript of what he eventually published as ''[[Walden|Walden, or Life in the Woods]]'' in 1854, recounting the two years, two months, and two days he had spent at Walden Pond. The book compresses that time into a single calendar year, using the passage of the four seasons to symbolize human development. Part memoir and part spiritual quest, ''Walden'' at first won few admirers, but later critics have regarded it as a classic American work that explores natural simplicity, harmony, and beauty as models for just social and cultural conditions.

The American poet [[Robert Frost]] wrote of Thoreau, "In one book ... he surpasses everything we have had in America."<ref>Frost, Robert (1968). Letter to Wade Van Dore, June 24, 1922, in ''Twentieth Century Interpretations of Walden''. Richard Ruland, ed. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall. p. 8. {{LCCN|6814480}}.</ref>

The American author [[John Updike]] said of the book, "A century and a half after its publication, Walden has become such a totem of the back-to-nature, preservationist, anti-business, civil-disobedience mindset, and Thoreau so vivid a protester, so perfect a crank and hermit saint, that the book risks being as revered and unread as the Bible."<ref>Updike, John (2004). "A Sage for All Seasons". [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jun/26/classics ''The Guardian''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210827194247/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jun/26/classics |date=August 27, 2021 }}.</ref>

Thoreau moved out of Emerson's house in July 1848 and stayed at a house on nearby Belknap Street. In 1850, he moved into a house at [[Thoreau-Alcott House|255 Main Street]], where he lived until his death.<ref>Ehrlich, Eugene; Carruth, Gorton (1982). ''The Oxford Illustrated Literary Guide to the United States''. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 45. {{ISBN|0195031865}}.</ref>

In the summer of 1850, Thoreau and Channing journeyed from Boston to [[Montreal]] and [[Quebec City]]. These would be Thoreau's only travels outside the United States.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Weisman|first1=Adam Paul|title=Postcolonialism in North America: Imaginative Colonization in Henry David Thoreau's 'A Yankee in Canada' and Jacques Poulin's 'Volkswagen Blues'|journal=The Massachusetts Review|date=Autumn 1995|volume=36|issue=3|pages=478–479}}</ref> It is as a result of this trip that he developed lectures that eventually became ''A Yankee in Canada''. He jested that all he got from this adventure "was a cold".<ref>{{cite book|last1=Thoreau|first1=Henry David|title=A Yankee in Canada|url=https://archive.org/details/yankeeincanada0000thor|url-access=registration|date=1961|publisher=Harvest House|location=Montreal|page=[https://archive.org/details/yankeeincanada0000thor/page/13 13]}}</ref><ref name="ReferenceB">{{cite journal|last1=Lacroix|first1=Patrick|title=Finding Thoreau in French Canada: The Ideological Legacy of the American Revolution|journal=American Review of Canadian Studies|date=Fall 2017|volume=47|issue=3|pages=266–279|doi=10.1080/02722011.2017.1370719|s2cid=148808283}}</ref>

===Later years, 1851–1862===
[[File:VII. Rowse.jpg|thumb|Thoreau in 1854]]
In 1851, Thoreau became increasingly fascinated with [[natural history]] and narratives of travel and expedition. He read avidly on [[botany]] and often wrote observations on this topic into his journal. He admired [[William Bartram]] and [[Charles Darwin]]'s ''[[The Voyage of the Beagle|Voyage of the Beagle]]''. He kept detailed observations on Concord's nature lore, recording everything from how the fruit ripened over time to the fluctuating depths of Walden Pond and the days certain birds migrated. The point of this task was to "anticipate" the seasons of nature, in his word.<ref>[http://www.walden.org/documents/file/Library/Thoreau/writings/correspondence/LettersBlake.pdf#page34 Letters to H.&nbsp;G.&nbsp;O. Blake] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110617003953/http://www.walden.org/documents/file/Library/Thoreau/writings/correspondence/LettersBlake.pdf |date=June 17, 2011 }}. Walden.org</ref><ref>Thoreau, Henry David (1862). "Autumnal Tints". ''The Atlantic Monthly'', October. pp. 385–402. [http://www.walden.org/Institute/thoreau/writings/essays/Thoreau_Autumnal%20Tints.pdf Reprint] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100307053611/http://www.walden.org/Institute/thoreau/writings/essays/Thoreau_Autumnal%20Tints.pdf |date=March 7, 2010 }}. Retrieved November 21, 2009.</ref>

He became a [[Surveying|land surveyor]] and continued to write increasingly detailed observations on the natural history of the town, covering an area of {{convert|26|sqmi|km2|abbr=off|sp=us}}, in his journal, a two-million-word document he kept for 24 years. He also kept a series of notebooks, and these observations became the source of his late writings on natural history, such as "[[Autumnal Tints]]", "The Succession of Trees", and "Wild Apples", an essay lamenting the destruction of the local [[wild apple]] species.

With the rise of [[environmental history]] and [[ecocriticism]] as academic disciplines, several new readings of Thoreau began to emerge, showing him to have been both a philosopher and an analyst of ecological patterns in fields and woodlots.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Thorson|first1=Robert M.|title=Walden's Shore: Henry David Thoreau and Nineteenth-Century Science|date=2013|publisher=Harvard University Press|location=Cambridge, Massachusetts|isbn=978-0674724785}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|last1=Primack|first1=Richard B.|title=Tracking Climate Change with the Help of Henry David Thoreau|url=http://www.elsevier.com/connect/tracking-climate-change-with-the-help-of-henry-david-thoreau|access-date=September 23, 2015|date=June 13, 2013|archive-date=September 23, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150923155958/http://www.elsevier.com/connect/tracking-climate-change-with-the-help-of-henry-david-thoreau|url-status=live}}</ref> For instance, "The Succession of Forest Trees", shows that he used experimentation and analysis to explain how forests regenerate after fire or human destruction, through the dispersal of seeds by winds or animals. In this lecture, first presented to a cattle show in Concord, and considered his greatest contribution to ecology, Thoreau explained why one species of tree can grow in a place where a different tree did previously. He observed that squirrels often carry nuts far from the tree from which they fell to create stashes. These seeds are likely to germinate and grow should the squirrel die or abandon the stash. He credited the squirrel for performing a "great service ... in the economy of the universe."<ref>{{cite book|last1=Worster|first1=Donald|title=Nature's Economy|date=1977|publisher=Cambridge University|location=New York|isbn=0521452732|pages=69–71}}</ref>
[[File:Walden Pond, 2010.jpg|thumb|left|[[Walden Pond]]]]

He traveled to [[Canada East]] once, [[Cape Cod]] four times, and Maine three times; these landscapes inspired his "excursion" books, ''[[A Yankee in Canada]]'', ''Cape Cod'', and ''The Maine Woods'', in which travel itineraries frame his thoughts about geography, history and philosophy. Other travels took him southwest to [[Philadelphia]] and New York City in 1854 and west across the [[Great Lakes region (North America)|Great Lakes region]] in 1861, when he visited [[Niagara Falls]], Detroit, Chicago, [[Milwaukee]], [[St. Paul, Minnesota|St. Paul]] and [[Mackinac Island]].<ref>Thoreau, Henry David (1970). ''The Annotated Walden''. Philip Van Doren Stern, ed. pp. 96, 132.</ref> He was provincial in his own travels, but he read widely about travel in other lands. He devoured all the first-hand travel accounts available in his day, at a time when the last unmapped regions of the earth were being explored. He read [[Ferdinand Magellan|Magellan]] and [[James Cook]]; the [[arctic explorer]]s [[John Franklin]], [[Alexander Mackenzie (explorer)|Alexander Mackenzie]] and [[William Parry (explorer)|William Parry]]; [[David Livingstone]] and [[Richard Francis Burton]] on Africa; [[Lewis and Clark]]; and hundreds of lesser-known works by explorers and literate travelers.<ref>Christie, John Aldrich (1965). ''Thoreau as World Traveler''. New York: Columbia University Press.</ref> Astonishing amounts of reading fed his endless curiosity about the peoples, cultures, religions and natural history of the world and left its traces as commentaries in his voluminous journals. He processed everything he read, in the local laboratory of his Concord experience. Among his famous aphorisms is his advice to "live at home like a traveler".<ref>[http://www.walden.org/Library/The_Writings_of_Henry_David_Thoreau:_The_Digital_Collection/Correspondence Letters of H.&nbsp;G.&nbsp;O. Blake] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110617003655/http://www.walden.org/Library/The_Writings_of_Henry_David_Thoreau%3A_The_Digital_Collection/Correspondence |date=June 17, 2011 }} in ''The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: The Digital Collection''.</ref>

After [[John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry]], many prominent voices in the abolitionist movement distanced themselves from Brown or [[Damn with faint praise|damned him with faint praise]]. Thoreau was disgusted by this, and he composed a key speech, "[[A Plea for Captain John Brown]]", which was uncompromising in its defense of Brown and his actions. Thoreau's speech proved persuasive: the abolitionist movement began to accept Brown as a martyr, and by the time of the [[American Civil War]] entire armies of the North were [[John Brown's Body|literally singing Brown's praises]]. As a biographer of Brown put it, "If, as Alfred Kazin suggests, without John Brown there would have been no Civil War, we would add that without the Concord Transcendentalists, John Brown would have had little cultural impact."<ref>Reynolds, David S. (2005). ''John Brown, Abolitionist''. Knopf. p. 4.</ref>
[[File:Henry David Thoreau - Dunshee ambrotpe 1861.jpg|thumb|left|Thoreau in his second and final photographic sitting, August 1861.]]

===Tuberculosis and death===
Thoreau contracted [[tuberculosis]] in 1835 and suffered from it sporadically afterwards. In 1860, following a late-night excursion to count the rings of tree stumps during a rainstorm, he became ill with [[bronchitis]].<ref>{{Cite book|last=Richardson|first=Robert D. Jr.|title=Faith in a Seed: The First Publication of Thoreau's Last Manuscript|publisher=Island Press|year=1993|editor-last=Dean|editor-first=Bradley P.|location=Washington, D.C.|pages=17|chapter=Introduction}}</ref><ref>[https://www.walden.org/Library/About_Thoreau's_Life_and_Writings:_The_Research_Collections/Thoreau,_the_Man About Thoreau: Thoreau, the Man] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160620045648/http://www.walden.org/Library/About_Thoreau%27s_Life_and_Writings%3A_The_Research_Collections/Thoreau%2C_the_Man |date=June 20, 2016 }}.</ref><ref>[http://thoreau.eserver.org/wfchron.html Thoreau Chronology] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170620133904/http://thoreau.eserver.org/wfchron.html |date=June 20, 2017 }}.</ref> His health declined, with brief periods of remission, and he eventually became bedridden. Recognizing the terminal nature of his disease, Thoreau spent his last years revising and editing his unpublished works, particularly ''[[The Maine Woods]]'' and [[Excursions (anthology)|''Excursions'']], and petitioning publishers to print revised editions of ''A Week'' and ''Walden''. He wrote letters and journal entries until he became too weak to continue. His friends were alarmed at his diminished appearance and they were fascinated by his tranquil acceptance of death. When he was asked in his last weeks if he had made his peace with God, Thoreau responded, "I did not know we had ever quarreled."<ref>{{cite book|first=Simon|last=Critchley|title=The Book of Dead Philosophers|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ME-6IKs4a2sC&pg=PA181|page=181|location=New York|publisher=Random House|date=2009|isbn=978-0307472632|access-date=June 20, 2015|archive-date=August 27, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210827194251/https://books.google.com/books?id=ME-6IKs4a2sC&pg=PA181|url-status=live}}</ref>

[[File:Grave of Henry David Thoreau.jpeg|thumb|Grave of Thoreau at [[Sleepy Hollow Cemetery (Concord, Massachusetts)|Sleepy Hollow Cemetery]] in Concord]]Aware that he was dying, Thoreau's last words were "Now comes good sailing", followed by two lone words, "moose" and "Indian".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/programs/2008/05/05/|title=The Writer's Almanac|publisher=American Public Media|access-date=June 1, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170708225006/http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/programs/2008/05/05/|archive-date=July 8, 2017|url-status=dead}}</ref> He died on May 6, 1862, at the age of 44. [[Amos Bronson Alcott]] planned the service and read selections from Thoreau's works, and Channing presented a hymn.<ref>{{cite book |last=Packer |first=Barbara L. |year=2007 |title=The Transcendentalists |location=Athens, Georgia |publisher=University of Georgia Press |page=272 |isbn=978-0820329581}}</ref> Emerson wrote the eulogy spoken at the funeral.<ref>{{cite magazine|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NWACAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA239|last= Emerson|first= Ralph Waldo |title=Thoreau|magazine=The Atlantic|date= August 1862|pages=239–249}}</ref> Thoreau was buried in the Dunbar family plot; his remains and those of members of his immediate family were eventually moved to [[Sleepy Hollow Cemetery (Concord, Massachusetts)|Sleepy Hollow Cemetery]] in Concord, Massachusetts.

=== "Life Without Principle" final works and legacy ===
[[File:David Henry Thoreau.jpg|thumb|Geodetic Marker at Thoreau's gravesite|200x200px]]Thoreau prepared "[[Life Without Principle]]" for publication during the final months of his life based on his journal notes between 1851 and 1855 that originally inspired his lecture. It was published posthumously in 1863 in The Atlantic Monthly.<ref name=":3">{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=o10CAAAAIAAJ&vq=atlantic+monthly+1863&source=gbs_navlinks_s |title=The Atlantic Monthly |title-link= |date=1863 |work= |publisher=Atlantic Monthly Company |publication-date=October 1863 |pages=484–495 |language=en}}</ref><ref>Schneider, Richard J. (2016). ''Civilizing Thoreau: Human Ecology and the Emerging Social Sciences in the Major Works''. Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell & Brewer. p. 76.  {{ISBN|978-1-57113-960-3}}.</ref> The ideas in this essay provide an overview of Thoreau's philosophy of work and life, challenging the notion that work is the most crucial aspect of an individual's life. He emphasizes the need for the act of doing the work itself, and doing it well, to be fulfilling for the [[laborer]], and not merely something that is done in exchange for a [[wage]] or [[Profit (economics)|profit]]. He posits also that spending your life working purely for these reasons is a waste of one's time and, thus, life.

During this same middle passage of "Life Without Principle" Thoreau connects how market forces and capital trade influence a system that does not encourage or promote skill or experience in the work being done, rather quite the opposite. He gives example in the fact that, in his own work as a [[Surveying|surveyor]], he is often asked by employers not to do the job ''skillfully'' or ''accurately'' but in a way that most benefits them. He addresses, also, a [[firewood]] hawker with whom he tried to share a new more accurate way of measuring a [[Cord (unit)|cord]] of wood who told him that the more accurately he measured the wood, the more business he would lose as clients similarly preferred less skill and accuracy in measuring as they thought that this might net them some advantage in the error.<blockquote>"The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself. If you would get money as a writer or lecturer, you must be popular, which is to go down perpendicularly. Those services which the community will most readily pay for it is most disagreeable to render. You are paid for being something less than a man. The State does not commonly reward a genius any more wisely.

Even the poet-laureate would rather not have to celebrate the accidents of royalty. He must be bribed with a pipe of wine; and perhaps another poet is called away from his muse to gauge that very pipe. As for my own business, even that kind of surveying which I could do with most satisfaction my employers do not want. They would prefer that I should do my work coarsely and not too well, ay, not well enough. When I observe that there are different ways of surveying, my employer commonly asks which will give him the most land, not which is most correct. I once invented a rule for measuring cord-wood, and tried to introduce it in Boston; but the measurer there told me that the sellers did not wish to have their wood measured correctly,—that he was already too accurate for them, and therefore they commonly got their wood measured in Charlestown before crossing the bridge.

The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get "a good job," but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

It is remarkable that there are few men so well employed, so much to their minds, but that a little money or fame would commonly buy them off from their present pursuit. I see advertisements for active young men, as if activity were the whole of a young man's capital. Yet I have been surprised when one has with confidence proposed to me, a grown man, to embark in some enterprise of his, as if I had absolutely nothing to do, my life having been a complete failure hitherto. What a doubtful compliment this is to pay me! As if he had met me half-way across the ocean beating up against the wind, but bound nowhere, and proposed to me to go along with him! If I did, what do you think the underwriters would say? No, no! I am not without employment at this stage of the voyage. To tell the truth, I saw an advertisement for able-bodied seamen, when I was a boy, sauntering in my native port, and as soon as I came of age I embarked."<ref name=":3" /></blockquote>"Life Without Principle" also touches on his ideas and final philosophical contributions to [[Welfarism]], [[humanism]], [[Media consumption|passive media consumption]], [[economic materialism]], and [[Naturalism (philosophy)|empirical naturalism]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Berger |first=Michael |url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/Henry_David_Thoreau/tnh4EQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=atlantic+monthly+1863+life+without+principle&pg=PT169&printsec=frontcover |title=Henry David Thoreau: A Companion |date=2025-08-01 |publisher=McFarland |isbn=978-1-4766-5556-7 |language=en}}</ref>

In addition to "Life Without Principle", Thoreau was writing and reworking several other lectures and essays for publication in the final months of his life, including "[[Walking (Thoreau)|Walking]]", "Wild Apples", and "Autumnal Tints".<ref>Robinson, David (2004). ''Natural Life: Thoreau's Worldly Transcendentalism''. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.  {{ISBN|978-0-8014-4313-8}}.</ref>

== Ideas ==

=== Nature and human existence ===
{{blockquote|Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.| Thoreau<ref>''Walden, or Life in the Woods'' (Chapter 1: "Economy")</ref>}}

Similar to other Transcendentalists, Thoreau saw the natural world itself and one's presence in it as the answer to mankind's search for higher power.<ref>{{Citation |last=Furtak |first=Rick Anthony |title=Henry David Thoreau |date=2023 |work=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |editor-last=Zalta |editor-first=Edward N. |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2023/entrieshoreau/ |access-date=2026-06-08 |edition=Spring 2023 |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |editor2-last=Nodelman |editor2-first=Uri}}</ref> In the “Friday” chapter of ''A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers'', he posits, “Is not Nature, rightly read, that of which she is commonly taken to be the symbol merely?”<ref>“Friday”, ''A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers,'' Thoreau</ref> Noting too in other journal entries that he was always intent “to be always on the alert to find God in nature” <ref>''Journal'', 9/7/51, Thoreau</ref>

In "Higher Laws," a central chapter of ''Walden,'' Thoreau outlines claims that human beings have a dual nature, part spiritual and part animal. Detailing that humanity is supposed to exercise and nourish the spiritual part, not the animal part.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Wu |first=Su-chen |date=June 2017 |title=Spirituality and Vegetarianism in Thoreau's Higher Laws |url=https://ijll.thebrpi.org/journals/ijll/Vol_5_No_1_June_2017/3.pdf |journal=International Journal of Language and Literature |volume=5 |issue=1 |pages=16–24 |via=American Research Institute for Policy Development}}</ref>

Thoreau was an early advocate of recreational hiking and [[canoeing]], of conserving natural resources on private land, and of preserving wilderness as public land. He was a highly skilled canoeist; [[Nathaniel Hawthorne]], after a ride with him, noted that "Mr. Thoreau managed the boat so perfectly, either with two paddles or with one, that it seemed instinct with his own will, and to require no physical effort to guide it."<ref>Nathaniel Hawthorne, Passages From the American Note-Books, entry for September 2, 1842.</ref>

He was not a strict vegetarian, though he said he preferred that diet<ref>Brooks, Van Wyck. ''The Flowering of New England''. New York: E.P. Dutton and Company, Inc., 1952. p. 310</ref> and advocated it as a means of self-improvement. He wrote in ''Walden'', "The practical objection to animal food in my case was its uncleanness; and besides, when I had caught and cleaned and cooked and eaten my fish, they seemed not to have fed me essentially. It was insignificant and unnecessary, and cost more than it came to. A little bread or a few potatoes would have done as well, with less trouble and filth."<ref name="Cheever241">Cheever, Susan (2006). ''American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau; Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work''. Detroit: Thorndike Press. Large print edition. p. 241. {{ISBN|078629521X}}.</ref>

[[File:Thoreaus quote near his cabin site, Walden Pond.jpg|thumb|Thoreau's famous quotation, near his cabin site at Walden Pond]]
Thoreau neither rejected civilization nor fully embraced wilderness. Instead, he sought a middle ground, the [[pastoral]] realm that integrates nature and culture. His philosophy required that he be a didactic arbitrator between the wilderness he based so much on and the spreading mass of humanity in North America. He decried the latter endlessly but felt that a teacher needs to be close to those who needed to hear what he wanted to tell them. The wilderness he enjoyed was the nearby swamp or forest, and he preferred "partially cultivated country". His idea of being "far in the recesses of the wilderness" of Maine was to "travel the logger's path and the Indian trail", but he also hiked on pristine land.

In an essay titled "Henry David Thoreau, Philosopher", [[environmental history|environmental historian]] [[Roderick Nash]] wrote, "Thoreau left Concord in 1846 for the first of three trips to northern Maine. His expectations were high because he hoped to find genuine, primeval America. But contact with real wilderness in Maine affected him far differently than had the idea of wilderness in Concord. Instead of coming out of the woods with a deepened appreciation of the wilds, Thoreau felt a greater respect for civilization and realized the necessity of balance."<ref>Nash, Roderick. ''Wilderness and the American Mind: Henry David Thoreau: Philosopher''.</ref>

On alcohol, Thoreau wrote, "I would fain keep sober always. ... I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man; wine is not so noble a liquor. ... Of all ebriosity, who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes?"<ref name="Cheever241" />

===Politics===
[[File:John Brown - Treason broadside, 1859.png|thumb|left|John Brown "Treason" Broadside, 1859]]

Thoreau was fervently against [[Slavery in the United States|slavery]] and he actively supported the [[Abolitionism in the United States|abolitionist movement]].<ref name=":6" /> He participated as a conductor in the [[Underground Railroad]], delivered lectures that attacked the [[Fugitive Slave Law of 1850|Fugitive Slave Law]], and in opposition to the popular opinion of the time, supported radical abolitionist militia leader [[John Brown (abolitionist)|John Brown]] and his party.<ref name=":6">{{cite encyclopedia|last=Furtak|first=Rick|title=Henry David Thoreau|url=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thoreau/|encyclopedia=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy|access-date=July 27, 2013|archive-date=August 13, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130813055226/http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thoreau/|url-status=live}}</ref> Two weeks after the ill-fated [[raid on Harpers Ferry]] and in the weeks leading up to Brown's execution, Thoreau delivered a speech to the citizens of Concord, Massachusetts, in which he compared the American government to [[Pontius Pilate]] and likened Brown's execution to the [[crucifixion of Jesus Christ]]:

{{blockquote|Some eighteen hundred years ago Christ was crucified; this morning, perchance, Captain Brown was hung. These are the two ends of a chain which is not without its links. He is not Old Brown any longer; he is an angel of light.<ref name="ReferenceA" />}}

In "[[The Last Days of John Brown]]", Thoreau described the words and deeds of [[John Brown (abolitionist)|John Brown]] as noble and an example of heroism.<ref name=":1">[http://www.walden.org/Library/The_Writings_of_Henry_David_Thoreau:_The_Digital_Collection/Essays The Last Days of John Brown] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101222023007/http://www.walden.org/Library/The_Writings_of_Henry_David_Thoreau%3A_The_Digital_Collection/Essays |date=December 22, 2010 }} from the Writings of Henry David Thoreau: The Digital Collection</ref> In addition, he lamented the newspaper editors who dismissed Brown and his scheme as "crazy".<ref name=":1" />

Thoreau was a proponent of [[limited government]] and [[individualism]]. Although he was hopeful that mankind could potentially have, through self-betterment, the kind of government which "governs not at all", he distanced himself from contemporary "no-government men" ([[Anarchism|anarchists]]), writing: "I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government."<ref name="resistance">{{cite web |last1=Thoreau |first1=Henry David |title=On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, 1849, original title: Resistance to Civil Government |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/71/71-h/71-h.htm |access-date=May 20, 2023 |website=[[The Project Gutenberg]]}}</ref>

Thoreau believed that the evolution from [[absolute monarchy]] to [[limited monarchy]] to democracy was "a progress toward true respect for the individual" and he theorized about further improvements "towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man".<ref name="resistance" /> Echoing this belief, he went on to write: "There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly."<ref name="resistance" />

It is on this basis that Thoreau could so strongly inveigh against the British administration and [[Catholicism]] in ''A Yankee in Canada''. Despotic authority, Thoreau argued, had crushed the people's sense of ingenuity and enterprise; the Canadian ''habitants'' had been reduced, in his view, to a perpetual childlike state. Ignoring the recent rebellions, he argued that there would be no revolution in the St. Lawrence River valley.<ref name="ReferenceB" /><ref>{{cite book|last1=Thoreau|first1=Henry David|title=A Yankee in Canada|url=https://archive.org/details/yankeeincanada0000thor|url-access=registration|date=1961|publisher=Harvest House|location=Montreal|pages=[https://archive.org/details/yankeeincanada0000thor/page/105 105–107]}}</ref>

Although Thoreau believed that resistance to unjustly exercised authority could be both violent (exemplified in his support for John Brown) and nonviolent (his own example of [[tax resistance]] as described in "Resistance to Civil Government"), he regarded [[Pacifism|pacifist]] [[nonresistance]] as a temptation to passivity,<ref name=":4">[http://www.walden.org/Library/The_Writings_of_Henry_David_Thoreau:_The_Digital_Collection/Essays The Service] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101222023007/http://www.walden.org/Library/The_Writings_of_Henry_David_Thoreau%3A_The_Digital_Collection/Essays |date=December 22, 2010 }} from the Writings of Henry David Thoreau: The Digital Collection</ref> writing: "Let not our Peace be proclaimed by the rust on our swords, or our inability to draw them from their scabbards; but let her at least have so much work on her hands as to keep those swords bright and sharp."<ref name=":4" /> Furthermore, in a formal lyceum debate in 1841, he debated the subject "Is it ever proper to offer forcible resistance?", arguing the affirmative.<ref>[http://thoreau.eserver.org/mjf/MJF1.html Transcendental Ethos] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130919100132/http://thoreau.eserver.org/MJF/MJF1.html |date=September 19, 2013 }} from The Thoreau Reader</ref>

Likewise, his condemnation of the [[Mexican–American War]] did not stem from pacifism, instead, it stemmed from his belief that Mexico was "unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army" as a means to expand the slave territory.<ref name=":5">{{cite web|url=http://www.walden.org/Library/About_Thoreau%27s_Life_and_Writings:_The_Research_Collections/Civil_Disobedience |work=Walden.org |title=The Walden Woods Project |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160620124518/http://www.walden.org/Library/About_Thoreau%27s_Life_and_Writings%3A_The_Research_Collections/Civil_Disobedience |archive-date=June 20, 2016 }}</ref>

Thoreau was [[ambivalence|ambivalent]] about industrialization and [[capitalism]]. On one hand, he regarded commerce as "unexpectedly confident and serene, adventurous, and unwearied"<ref name="ReferenceA" /> and expressed admiration for its associated [[cosmopolitanism]], writing:

{{blockquote|I am refreshed and expanded when the freight train rattles past me, and I smell the stores which go dispensing their odors all the way from Long Wharf to Lake Champlain, reminding me of foreign parts, of coral reefs, and Indian oceans, and tropical climes, and the extent of the globe. I feel more like a citizen of the world at the sight of the palm-leaf which will cover so many flaxen New England heads the next summer<ref name="ReferenceA" />}}

On the other hand, he wrote disparagingly of the factory system:

{{blockquote|I cannot believe that our factory system is the best mode by which men may get clothing. The condition of the operatives is becoming every day more like that of the English; and it cannot be wondered at, since, as far as I have heard or observed, the principal object is, not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestionably, that the corporations may be enriched.<ref name="ReferenceA" />}}

Thoreau also favored the protection of animals and wild areas, [[free trade]], and taxation for schools and highways,{{Citation needed|date=June 2026}}<ref name=":6" /> and espoused views that at least in part align with what is today known as [[bioregionalism]]. He disapproved of the subjugation of Native Americans, slavery, [[philistinism]], [[technological utopianism]], and what can be regarded in today's terms as [[consumerism]], mass entertainment, and frivolous applications of technology.<ref name=":6" />

===Intellectual interests, influences, and affinities===
====Indian sacred texts and philosophy====
Thoreau was influenced by [[Hindu texts|Indian spiritual thought]]. In ''Walden'', there are many overt references to the sacred texts of India. For example, in the first chapter ("Economy"), he writes: "How much more admirable the [[Bhagvat-geeta]] than all the ruins of the East!"<ref name="ReferenceA" /> ''American Philosophy: An Encyclopedia'' classes him as one of several figures who "took a more [[Pantheism|pantheist]] or [[Pandeism|pandeist]] approach by rejecting views of God as separate from the world",<ref>{{Cite book |title = American Philosophy: An Encyclopedia |author = [[John Lachs]] and [[Robert Talisse]] |date = 2007 |isbn = 978-0415939263 |page = 310 |publisher = Routledge }}</ref> also a characteristic of [[Hindu]]ism.

Furthermore, in "The Pond in Winter", he equates Walden Pond with the sacred [[Ganges in Hinduism|Ganges river]], writing:
{{blockquote|In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat Geeta since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I lay down the book and go to my well for water, and lo! there I meet the servant of the Brahmin, priest of Brahma and Vishnu and Indra, who still sits in his temple on the Ganges reading the Vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and water jug. I meet his servant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it were grate together in the same well. The pure Walden water is mingled with the [[Sacred waters|sacred water]] of the Ganges.<ref name="ReferenceA" />}}

Thoreau was aware his Ganges imagery could have been factual. He wrote about ice harvesting at Walden Pond. And he knew that New England's [[Ice trade|ice merchants]] were shipping ice to foreign ports, including [[Calcutta]].<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Dickason|first=David G.|date=1991|title=The Nineteenth-Century Indo-American Ice Trade: An Hyperborean Epic|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/312669|journal=Modern Asian Studies|volume=25|issue=1|pages=53–89|doi=10.1017/S0026749X00015845|jstor=312669|s2cid=144932927|issn=0026-749X|access-date=April 18, 2021|archive-date=April 18, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210418213408/https://www.jstor.org/stable/312669|url-status=live}}</ref>

Additionally, Thoreau followed various [[Hinduism|Hindu]] customs, including a diet largely consisting of rice ("It was fit that I should live on rice, mainly, who loved so well the philosophy of India."<ref name="ReferenceA" />), [[flute playing]] (reminiscent of the favorite musical pastime of [[Krishna]]),<ref>{{Cite web|last=|first=|last2=|last3=|first3=|date=July 12, 2020|title=Simplicity Day 2020: How Bhagavad Gita inspired American philosopher Henry David Thoreau|url=https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/simplicity-day-2020-how-bhagwat-geeta-inspired-american-philosopher-henry-david-thoreau/articleshow/76918441.cms|url-status=live|access-date=April 18, 2021|website=Times of India|language=en|archive-date=April 18, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210418213408/https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/simplicity-day-2020-how-bhagwat-geeta-inspired-american-philosopher-henry-david-thoreau/articleshow/76918441.cms}}</ref> and [[yoga]].<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Davis|first=Richard H.|date=January 2018|title=Henry David Thoreau, Yogi|url=https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-4253822|journal=Common Knowledge|volume=24|issue=1|pages=56–89|doi=10.1215/0961754X-4253822|s2cid=148836840 |issn=0961-754X|via=Duke University Press|url-access=subscription}}</ref>

In an 1849 letter to his friend H.G.O. Blake, he wrote about yoga and its meaning to him:

{{blockquote|Free in this world as the birds in the air, disengaged from every kind of chains, those who practice yoga gather in Brahma the certain fruits of their works. Depend upon it that, rude and careless as I am, I would fain practice the yoga faithfully. The yogi, absorbed in contemplation, contributes in his degree to creation; he breathes a divine perfume, he hears wonderful things. Divine forms traverse him without tearing him, and united to the nature which is proper to him, he goes, he acts as animating original matter. To some extent, and at rare intervals, even I am a yogi.<ref>Miller, Barbara S. "Why Did Henry David Thoreau Take the Bhagavad-Gita to Walden Pond?" ''Parabola'' 12.1 (Spring 1986): 58–63.</ref>}}

====Biology====
[[File:Eggs BSNH 1930.png|thumb|right|Bird eggs found by Thoreau and given to the [[Boston Society of Natural History]]. Those in the nest are of [[yellow warbler]], the other two of [[red-tailed hawk]].]]
Thoreau read contemporary works in the new science of biology, including the works of [[Alexander von Humboldt]], [[Charles Darwin]], and [[Asa Gray]] (Charles Darwin's staunchest American ally).<ref name=":0" /> Thoreau was deeply influenced by Humboldt, especially his work [[Cosmos (Humboldt book)|''Cosmos'']].<ref>Wulf, Andrea. ''The Invention of Nature: Alexander Humboldt's New World''. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015, p. 250.</ref>

In 1859, Thoreau purchased and read Darwin's ''[[On the Origin of Species]]''. Unlike many natural historians at the time, including [[Louis Agassiz]] who publicly opposed Darwinism in favor of a static view of nature, Thoreau was immediately enthusiastic about the theory of [[evolution by natural selection]] and endorsed it,<ref>Cain, William E. ''A Historical Guide to Henry David Thoreau''. {{ISBN|0195138635}}, p. 146.</ref> stating:

{{blockquote|1=The development theory implies a greater vital force in Nature, because it is more flexible and accommodating, and equivalent to a sort of constant new creation. (A quote from ''On the Origin of Species'' follows this sentence.)<ref name=":0">Berger, Michael Benjamin. ''Thoreau's Late Career and The Dispersion of Seeds: The Saunterer's Synoptic Vision''. {{ISBN|157113168X}}, p. 52.</ref>}}

== Identity ==

===Sexuality===
Thoreau [[bachelor|never married]] and he was also childless. In 1840, when he was 23, he proposed to eighteen-year-old [[Ellen Sewall Osgood|Ellen Sewall]], but she refused him, on the advice of her father.<ref name="Sewall">{{Cite web
|url=https://www.americanantiquarian.org/sewall-intro
|title=Introduction
|last=Knoles
|first=Thomas
|work=American Antiquarian Society
|quote=She was in Watertown when Henry wrote to her with his own proposal, probably in early November [1840]...'I wrote to H.T. that evening. I never felt so badly at sending a letter in my life.'
|date=2016
|access-date=December 17, 2021
|archive-date=June 5, 2023
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230605162219/https://www.americanantiquarian.org/sewall-intro
|url-status=dead
}}</ref> [[Sophia Foord]] proposed to him, but he rejected her.<ref name="sophia">{{cite web | title = Sophia Ford: The Great Love Henry David Thoreau Didn't Want | date = November 16, 2014 | url = https://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/sophia-ford-great-love-henry-david-thoreau-never-wanted/ | publisher = [[New England Historical Society]] | access-date = June 4, 2020 }}</ref>

Thoreau's sexuality has long been the subject of speculation, including by his contemporaries. Critics have called him [[Heterosexuality|heterosexual]], homosexual, or [[Asexuality|asexual]].<ref name="harding">Harding, Walter (1991). "Thoreau's Sexuality". ''Journal of Homosexuality'' 21.3. pp. 23–45.</ref><ref>{{cite book | url=https://archive.org/details/millennialseduct00quin | url-access=registration | title=Millennial Seduction | publisher=Cornell University Press | author=Quinby, Lee | page=[https://archive.org/details/millennialseduct00quin/page/68 68]| isbn=978-0801486012 | year=1999 }}</ref> There is no evidence to suggest he had physical relations with anyone, man or woman. Bronson Alcott wrote that Thoreau "seemed to have no temptations. All those strong wants that do battle with other men's nature, he knew not."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Harding |first1=Walter |title=Thoreau's Sexuality |journal=Journal of Homosexuality |date=1991 |volume=21 |issue=3 |pages=23–45 |url=https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Harding_Thoreau_Sexuality.pdf |publisher=State University College, Genseco, New York|doi=10.1300/J082v21n03_02 |pmid=1880400 }}</ref> Some scholars have suggested that homoerotic sentiments run through his writings and concluded that he was homosexual.<ref name="harding" /><ref>{{cite book |last=Bronski |first=Michael |title=A Queer History of the United States |publisher=Beacon Press |year=2012 |isbn=978-0807044650 |page=50|title-link=A Queer History of the United States }}</ref><ref>Michael, Warner (1991). "Walden's Erotic Economy" in ''Comparative American Identities: Race, Sex and Nationality in the Modern Text''. Hortense Spillers, ed. New York: Routledge. pp. 157–173.</ref> The elegy "Sympathy" was inspired by the eleven-year-old Edmund Sewall, who had just spent five days in the Thoreau household in 1839.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Robbins|first= Paula Ivaska|title=The Natural Thoreau|journal= The Gay and Lesbian Review |date=September–October 2011|id= {{ProQuest|890209875}}}}</ref> One scholar has suggested that he wrote the poem to Edmund because he could not bring himself to write it to Edmund's sister Anna,<ref>Richardson, Robert; Moser, Barry (1986). ''Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind''. University of California Press. pp. 58–63.</ref> and another that Thoreau's "emotional experiences with women are memorialized under a camouflage of masculine pronouns",<ref>Canby, Henry Seidel (1939). ''Thoreau''. Houghton Mifflin. p. 117.</ref> but other scholars dismiss this.<ref name="harding" /><ref>Katz, Jonathan Ned (1992). ''Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the USA''. New York: Meridian. pp. 481–492.</ref> It has been argued that the long [[paean]] in ''Walden'' to the French-Canadian woodchopper Alek Therien, which includes allusions to [[Achilles and Patroclus]], is an expression of conflicted desire.<ref>López, Robert Oscar (2007). "Thoreau, Homer and Community", in ''Henry David Thoreau''. Harold Bloom, ed. New York: Infobase Publishing. pp. 153–174.</ref> In some of Thoreau's writing there is the sense of a secret self.<ref>Summers, Claude J ''The Gay and Lesbian Literary Heritage'', Routledge, New York, 2002, p. 202</ref> In 1840 he writes in his journal: "My friend is the apology for my life. In him are the spaces which my orbit traverses".<ref>Bergman, David, ed. (2009). ''Gay American Autobiography: Writings From Whitman to Sedaris''. University of Wisconsin Press. p. 10</ref> Thoreau was strongly influenced by the moral reformers of his time, and this may have instilled anxiety and guilt over sexual desire.<ref>Lebeaux, Richard (1984). ''Thoreau's Seasons''. University of Massachusetts Press. p. 386, n. 31.</ref>

=== Parallels with the autistic experience ===
While Henry David Thoreau was never formally diagnosed with [[Autism|autism spectrum disorder]] (ASD) or another related condition, some people in the autistic community strongly identify with Thoreau's lived experience, as described in his essays.<ref name=":8">{{Cite book |last=Brown |first=Julie |title=Writers on the Spectrum: How Autism and Asperger's Syndrome Have Influenced Literary Writing |year= 2010 |publisher=Jessica Kingsley Publishers |isbn=978-1843109136 |location=Philadelphia, PA|pages=60–79 |language=EN}}</ref> It is speculated that Thoreau may have had ASD himself; Julie Brown, author of "Writers on the Spectrum: How Autism and Asperger's Syndrome Have Influenced Literary Writing", claims that Thoreau "demonstrated so many traits of Asperger's Syndrome (AS) that it seems very likely that he was affected by it".<ref name=":8" /> Brown specifically names Thoreau's social difficulties and his desire for solitude, his strict routines and his desire for sameness, his formation of his identity through his oppositional behavior, and his restrictive and intense interests, citing examples from Thoreau's essays.<ref name=":8" />

For example, in ''Walden'', Thoreau describes the (perceived) superiority of a simple diet and a limited wardrobe, as well as his construction of a rather spartan living space in the woods; Brown connects these traits to the repetitive, simple diets and clothing of other people with Asperger's Syndrome, and he asserts that the small size and limited decoration of Thoreau's living space was a sign of his desire for consistency and simplicity, which she asserts are "rooted in his place on the autism spectrum".<ref name=":8" />

== Influence ==
[[File:ThoreauBust.jpg|thumb|right|A [[Bust (sculpture)|bust]] of Thoreau from the [[Hall of Fame for Great Americans]] at the [[Bronx Community College]]]]
{{Liberalism US|activists and intellectuals}}
{{Anarchism US|people}}
{{Libertarianism US|intellectuals}}
{{Green anarchism |expanded=People}}

{{blockquote|text=Thoreau's careful observations and devastating conclusions have rippled into time, becoming stronger as the weaknesses Thoreau noted have become more pronounced ... Events that seem to be completely unrelated to his stay at Walden Pond have been influenced by it, including the national park system, the British labor movement, the creation of India, the civil rights movement, the hippie revolution, the environmental movement, and the wilderness movement. Today, Thoreau's words are quoted with feeling by liberals, socialists, anarchists, libertarians, and conservatives alike.|sign=Ken Kifer|source=''Analysis and Notes on Walden: Henry Thoreau's Text with Adjacent Thoreauvian Commentary''<ref>[http://www.kenkifer.com/Thoreau/ Analysis and Notes on Walden: Henry Thoreau's Text with Adjacent Thoreauvian Commentary] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060318110150/http://www.kenkifer.com/Thoreau/ |date=March 18, 2006 }} by Ken Kifer, 2002</ref>}}

Thoreau's political writings had little influence during his lifetime, as "his contemporaries did not see him as a theorist or as a radical", viewing him instead as a naturalist. They either dismissed or ignored his political essays, including "Civil Disobedience". The only two complete books (as opposed to essays) that were published in his lifetime, ''Walden'' and ''A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers'' (1849), both dealt with [[Natural environment|Nature]], in which he "loved to wander".<ref name=McElroy/> His obituary was lumped in with others, rather than as a separate article, in an 1862 yearbook.<ref>{{cite book|title=Appletons' annual cyclopaedia and register of important events of the year: 1862|date=1863|publisher=D. Appleton & Company|location=New York|page=666|url=https://archive.org/stream/1862appletonsan02newyuoft#page/n673/mode/1up}}</ref> Critics and the public continued either to disdain or to ignore Thoreau for years, but the publication of extracts from his journal in the 1880s by his friend H.G.O. Blake, and of a definitive set of Thoreau's works by the [[Riverside Insights|Riverside Press]] between 1893 and 1906, led to the rise of what [[History of literature|literary historian]] [[Fred Lewis Pattee|F.L. Pattee]] called a "Thoreau cult".<ref name=Pattee>[https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/42593/pg42593-images.html Pattee, Fred Lewis, ''A History of American Literature Since 1870'', Ch.VII, pp. 138–139 (Appleton: New York, London, 1915).]</ref>

Thoreau's writings went on to influence many public figures. Political leaders and reformers like [[Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi|Mohandas Gandhi]], U.S. President [[John F. Kennedy]], American civil rights activist [[Martin Luther King Jr.]], U.S. Supreme Court Justice [[William O. Douglas]], and [[Russian (citizen)|Russian]] author [[Leo Tolstoy]] all spoke of being strongly affected by Thoreau's work, particularly "Civil Disobedience", as did "right-wing theorist [[Frank Chodorov]] [who] devoted an entire issue of his monthly, ''Analysis'', to an appreciation of Thoreau".<ref name=Rothbard>[[Murray Rothbard|Rothbard, Murray]]. [http://archive.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard77.html Confessions of a Right-Wing Liberal] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150618045209/http://archive.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard77.html |date=June 18, 2015 }}, ''[[Ramparts (magazine)|Ramparts]]'', VI, 4, June 15, 1968</ref>

Thoreau also influenced many artists and authors including [[Edward Abbey]], [[Willa Cather]], [[Marcel Proust]], [[William Butler Yeats]], [[Sinclair Lewis]], [[Ernest Hemingway]], [[Upton Sinclair]],<ref>Maynard, W. Barksdale, ''Walden Pond: A History''. Oxford University Press, 2005. p. 265</ref> [[E. B. White]], [[Lewis Mumford]],<ref>Mumford, Lewis, ''The Golden Day: A Study in American Experience and Culture''. Boni and Liveright, 1926. pp. 56–59,</ref> [[Frank Lloyd Wright]], [[Alexander Posey]],<ref>Posey, Alexander. ''Lost Creeks: Collected Journals''. (Edited by Matthew Wynn Sivils) University of Nebraska Press, 2009. p. 38</ref> and [[Gustav Stickley]].<ref>Saunders, Barry. ''A Complex Fate: Gustav Stickley and the Craftsman Movement''. Preservation Press, 1996. p. 4</ref> Thoreau also influenced naturalists like [[John Burroughs]], [[John Muir]], [[E. O. Wilson]], [[Edwin Way Teale]], [[Joseph Wood Krutch]], [[B. F. Skinner]], [[David Brower]], and [[Loren Eiseley]], who ''Publishers Weekly'' called "the modern Thoreau".<ref>Kifer, Ken ''[http://www.kenkifer.com/Thoreau/ Analysis and Notes on Walden: Henry Thoreau's Text with Adjacent Thoreauvian Commentary] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060318110150/http://www.kenkifer.com/Thoreau/ |date=March 18, 2006 }}''</ref>

Thoreau's friend [[William Ellery Channing (poet)|William Ellery Channing]] published his first biography, ''Thoreau the Poet-Naturalist'', in 1873.<ref>{{Cite book|last1=Channing|first1=William Ellery|url=http://archive.org/details/poetnatthoreau00chanrich|title=Thoreau, the poet-naturalist, with Memorial verses|last2=Merrymount Press|last3=Sanborn|first3=F.B. (Franklin Benjamin)|last4=Updike|first4=Daniel Berkeley|date=1902|publisher=Boston, C.E. Goodspeed|others=University of California Libraries}}</ref> English writer [[Henry Stephens Salt]] wrote a biography of Thoreau in 1890, which popularized Thoreau's ideas in Britain: [[George Bernard Shaw]], [[Edward Carpenter]], and [[Robert Blatchford]] were among those who became Thoreau enthusiasts as a result of Salt's advocacy.<ref>Hendrick, George and Oehlschlaeger, Fritz (eds.) ''Toward the Making of Thoreau's Modern Reputation'', University of Illinois Press, 1979.</ref>

[[Mohandas Gandhi]] first read ''Walden'' in 1906, while working as a civil rights activist in [[Johannesburg]], South Africa. Gandhi first read "[[Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)|Civil Disobedience]]" while he sat in a South African prison for the crime of nonviolently protesting discrimination against the Indian population in the [[Transvaal Colony|Transvaal]]. The essay galvanized Gandhi, who wrote and published a synopsis of Thoreau's argument, calling what he termed its "incisive logic ... unanswerable" and referring to Thoreau as "one of the greatest and most moral men America has produced."<ref>[[Wendy McElroy|McElroy, Wendy]] (May 4, 2011) [https://mises.org/daily/5250/Here-the-State-Is-Nowhere-to-Be-Seen Here, the State Is Nowhere to Be Seen] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140913214409/http://mises.org/daily/5250/Here-the-State-Is-Nowhere-to-Be-Seen |date=September 13, 2014 }}, [[Mises Institute]]</ref><ref>"Although he was practicing civil disobedience before he read Thoreau's essay, Gandhi was quick to point out the debt he owed to Thoreau and other thinkers like him". Shawn Chandler Bingham, ''Thoreau and the sociological imagination : the wilds of society''. Lanham, Md. : Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2008. {{ISBN|978-0742560581}} p. 31.</ref> He told American reporter [[Webb Miller (journalist)|Webb Miller]], "[Thoreau's] ideas influenced me greatly. I adopted some of them and recommended the study of Thoreau to all of my friends who were helping me in the cause of [[Indian independence movement|Indian Independence]]. Why I actually took the name of my movement from Thoreau's essay 'On the Duty of Civil Disobedience', written about 80 years ago."<ref>Miller, Webb. I Found No Peace. Garden City, 1938. 238–239</ref>

[[Martin Luther King Jr.]] noted in his autobiography that his first encounter with the idea of nonviolent resistance was reading "On Civil Disobedience" in 1944 while attending [[Morehouse College]]. He wrote in his autobiography that it was,

<blockquote>Here, in this courageous New Englander's refusal to pay his taxes and his choice of jail rather than support a war that would spread slavery's territory into Mexico, I made my first contact with the theory of nonviolent resistance. Fascinated by the idea of refusing to cooperate with an evil system, I was so deeply moved that I reread the work several times. I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau. As a result of his writings and personal witness, we are the heirs of a legacy of creative protest. The teachings of Thoreau came alive in our civil rights movement; indeed, they are more alive than ever before. Whether expressed in a sit-in at lunch counters; a freedom ride into Mississippi; a peaceful protest in Albany, Georgia; a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama; these are outgrowths of Thoreau's insistence that evil must be resisted and that no moral man can patiently adjust to injustice.<ref>King, M.L. ''[http://www.stanford.edu/group/King//publications/autobiography/chp_2.htm Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070308023614/http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/publications/autobiography/chp_2.htm |date=March 8, 2007 }}'' chapter two</ref></blockquote>

American psychologist [[B. F. Skinner]] wrote that he carried a copy of Thoreau's ''Walden'' with him in his youth.<ref>Skinner, B.F., ''A Matter of Consequences''</ref> In ''[[Walden Two]]'' (published in 1948), Skinner wrote about a fictional [[Intentional community|utopian community]] of about 1,000 members inspired by the life of Henry Thoreau.<ref>Skinner, B.F., ''Walden Two'' (1948)</ref> Thoreau and his fellow [[Transcendentalists]] from [[Concord, Massachusetts]] were also a major inspiration for the American composer [[Charles Ives]], whose 1915 [[Piano Sonata No. 2 (Ives)|Piano Sonata No. 2]], known as the ''Concord Sonata'', features "impressionistic pictures of Emerson and Thoreau", and includes a part for flute, Thoreau's instrument, in its 4th movement.<ref>Burkholder, James Peter. ''Charles Ives and His World.'' Princeton University Press, 1996 (pp. 50–51)</ref>

Actor [[Ron Thompson (actor)|Ron Thompson]] did a dramatic portrayal of Henry David Thoreau in the 1976 [[NBC]] television series ''[[The Rebels (TV series)|The Rebels]]''.<ref>{{cite web|title=Tele-Vuesdate=Sunday, June 6, 1976|work=[[Independent Press-Telegram]]|date=June 6, 1976 |location=[[Long Beach, California]]|page=170|url=https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/30664120/|access-date=October 27, 2015|archive-date=November 5, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181105214432/https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/30664120/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|date=June 5, 1976|work=[[Redlands Daily Facts]]|title=TV Log|location=[[Redlands, California]]|page=10|url=https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/15447614/|access-date=October 27, 2015|archive-date=September 29, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150929050424/http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/15447614/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite video|work=[[NBC]]|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FdGBFTxkHY |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211211/3FdGBFTxkHY| archive-date=December 11, 2021 |url-status=live|title=Actor Ron Thompson as Henry David Thoreau in The Rebels|date=June 6, 1976}}{{cbignore}}</ref>

Thoreau's ideas have affected and resonated with various strains in the [[Anarchism|anarchist]] movement, with [[Emma Goldman]] referring to him as "the greatest American anarchist".<ref>{{cite book|author=Goldman, Emma|url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_U5ZYAAAAMAAJ|title=Anarchism and Other Essays|publisher=Mother Earth Publishing Association|page=[https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_U5ZYAAAAMAAJ/page/n67 62]|year=1917|author-link = Emma Goldman}}</ref> [[Green anarchism]] and [[anarcho-primitivism]] in particular have both derived inspiration and ecological points-of-view from the writings of Thoreau. [[John Zerzan]] included Thoreau's text "Excursions" (1863) in his edited compilation of works in the anarcho-primitivist tradition titled ''Against civilization: Readings and reflections''.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://www.amazon.fr/dp/toc/0922915989|title=Against Civilization: Readings And Reflections|first=John|last=Zerzan|via=Amazon|access-date=December 13, 2017|archive-date=August 7, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200807043841/https://www.amazon.fr/dp/toc/0922915989|url-status=live}}</ref> Additionally, [[Murray Rothbard]], the founder of [[anarcho-capitalism]], has opined that Thoreau was one of the "great intellectual heroes" of his movement.<ref name="Rothbard" /> Thoreau was also an important influence on late 19th-century anarchist [[naturist|naturism]].<ref name="naturismolibertario">{{Cite web|url=http://www.soliobrera.org/pdefs/cuaderno4.pdf#search=%22Antonia%20Maym%C3%B3n%22|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20160102181805/http://www.soliobrera.org/pdefs/cuaderno4.pdf|url-status=dead|title=El naturismo libertario en la Península Ibérica (1890–1939) by Jose Maria Rosello|archivedate=January 2, 2016}}</ref><ref name="ortega">{{cite web|url=https://www.naturismo.org/adn/ediciones/2003/invierno/7e.html|title=Anarchism, Nudism, Naturism|first=Carlos|last=Ortega|access-date=July 20, 2018|archive-date=September 9, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200909150845/https://www.naturismo.org/adn/ediciones/2003/invierno/7e.html|url-status=live}}</ref> Globally, Thoreau's concepts also held importance within [[individualist anarchist]] circles<ref name="spanishind">{{Cite web|url=http://www.acracia.org/xdiez.html|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20060526224800/http://www.acracia.org/xdiez.html|url-status=dead|title='La insumisión voluntaria. El anarquismo individualista Español durante la dictadura y la segunda República (1923–1938)' by Xavier Diez|archivedate=May 26, 2006}}</ref><ref name="aujourdhui">"Les anarchistes individualistes du début du siècle l'avaient bien compris, et intégraient le naturisme dans leurs préoccupations. Il est vraiment dommage que ce discours se soit peu à peu effacé, d'antan plus que nous assistons, en ce moment, à un retour en force du puritanisme (conservateur par essence)."[http://ytak.club.fr/natytak.html "Anarchisme et naturisme, aujourd'hui." by Cathy Ytak] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090225212442/http://ytak.club.fr/natytak.html |date=February 25, 2009 }}</ref> in Spain,<ref name="naturismolibertario" /><ref name="ortega" /><ref name="spanishind" /> France,<ref name="spanishind" /><ref name="france">[http://ytak.club.fr/natbiblioarmand.html Recension des articles de l'En-Dehors consacrés au naturisme et au nudisme] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081014165702/http://ytak.club.fr/natbiblioarmand.html |date=October 14, 2008 }}</ref> and Portugal.<ref name="portugal">Freire, João. "Anarchisme et naturisme au Portugal, dans les années 1920" in ''Les anarchistes du Portugal''. [Bibliographic data necessary for this ref.]</ref>

For the 200th anniversary of his birth, publishers released several new editions of his work: a recreation of ''Walden''{{'s}} 1902 edition with illustrations, a picture book with excerpts from ''Walden'', and an annotated collection of Thoreau's essays on slavery.<ref>{{Cite news |last1=Williams |first1=John |title=Alcoholism in America |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=July 7, 2017 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/07/books/review/alcoholism-in-america.html |issn=0362-4331 |access-date=August 23, 2017 |archive-date=August 4, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170804204030/https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/07/books/review/alcoholism-in-america.html |url-status=live }}</ref> The United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp honoring Thoreau on May 23, 2017, in Concord, MA.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://stamps.org/US-New-Issues-2017|title=American Philatelic Society|website=stamps.org|access-date=August 10, 2018|archive-date=August 6, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180806210814/https://stamps.org/US-New-Issues-2017|url-status=live}}</ref>

==Critical reception==
Thoreau's work and career received little attention from his contemporaries until 1865, when the ''[[North American Review]]'' published [[James Russell Lowell]]'s review of various papers by Thoreau that Emerson had collected and edited.<ref>Pattee, ''A History of American Literature Since 1870'', pp. 137–138.</ref> Lowell's essay, ''Letters to Various Persons'',<ref name=NAR>{{Cite journal|url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/25107873|title=Lowell, James Russell, "Letters to Various Persons", in ''The North American Review'', Vol. CI, No. 209, pp. 597–608 (October 1865).|year=1865|journal=The North American Review|volume=101|issue=209|pages=597–608|jstor=25107873}}</ref> which he republished as a chapter in his book, ''My Study Windows'',<ref name=Lowell>{{Cite web|url=https://archive.org/details/mystudywindow00loweiala/page/193/mode/1up?view=theater|title=My study windows|first=James Russell|last=Lowell|date=May 6, 1871|publisher=Boston : Houghton, Mifflin|via=Internet Archive}}</ref> derided Thoreau as a humorless [[poseur]] trafficking in commonplaces, a [[Moral sense theory|sentimentalist]] lacking in imagination, a "[[Diogenes]] in his barrel", resentfully criticizing what he could not attain.<ref name="Pattee, p.138">Pattee, ''A History of American Literature Since 1870'', p. 138.</ref> Lowell's caustic analysis influenced Scottish author [[Robert Louis Stevenson]],<ref name="Pattee, p.138"/> who criticized Thoreau as a "skulker", saying "He did not wish virtue to go out of him among his fellow-men, but slunk into a corner to hoard it for himself."<ref name="RLS">{{Cite web |url=http://thoreau.eserver.org/stevens1.html
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061012063926/http://thoreau.eserver.org/stevens1.html
|archive-date=October 12, 2006
|title=Henry David Thoreau: His Character and Opinions
|author=Stevenson, Robert Louis |work=Cornhill Magazine
|quote=Now Thoreau's content and ecstasy in living was, we may say, like a plant that he had watered and tended with womanish solicitude; for there is apt to be something unmanly, something almost dastardly, in a life that does not move with dash and freedom, and that fears the bracing contact of the world. In one word, Thoreau was a skulker
|date=1880 |access-date=December 3, 2021}}</ref>

[[Nathaniel Hawthorne]] had mixed feelings about Thoreau. He noted that "He is a keen and delicate observer of nature—a genuine observer—which, I suspect, is almost as rare a character as even an original poet; and Nature, in return for his love, seems to adopt him as her especial child, and shows him secrets which few others are allowed to witness."<ref>Nathaniel Hawthorne, ''Passages From the American Note-Books'', entry for September 2, 1842.</ref> On the other hand, he also wrote that Thoreau "repudiated all regular modes of getting a living, and seems inclined to lead a sort of Indian life among civilized men".<ref>Hawthorne, ''The Heart of Hawthorne's Journals'', p. 106.</ref><ref>Borst, Raymond R. ''The Thoreau Log: A Documentary Life of Henry David Thoreau, 1817–1862.'' New York: G.K. Hall, 1992.</ref>

In a similar vein, poet [[John Greenleaf Whittier]] detested what he deemed to be the "wicked" and "heathenish" message of ''Walden'', claiming that Thoreau wanted man to "lower himself to the level of a [[woodchuck]] and walk on four legs".<ref>Wagenknecht, Edward. ''John Greenleaf Whittier: A Portrait in Paradox''. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967: 112.</ref>

In response to such criticisms, the English novelist [[George Eliot]], writing decades later for the ''[[Westminster Review]]'', characterized such critics as uninspired and narrow-minded:
{{blockquote|text=People—very wise in their own eyes—who would have every man's life ordered according to a particular pattern, and who are intolerant of every existence the utility of which is not palpable to them, may pooh-pooh Mr. Thoreau and this episode in his history, as unpractical and dreamy.<ref>''[[The New England Quarterly]]'', Vol. 6, No. 4 (Dec., 1933), pp. 733–746</ref>}}

Thoreau himself also responded to the criticism in a paragraph of his work ''Walden'' by highlighting what he felt was the irrelevance of their inquiries:

{{blockquote|text=I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice of my readers if very particular inquiries had not been made by my townsmen concerning my mode of life, which some would call impertinent, though they do not appear to me at all impertinent, but, considering the circumstances, very natural and pertinent. Some have asked what I got to eat; if I did not feel lonesome; if I was not afraid; and the like. Others have been curious to learn what portion of my income I devoted to charitable purposes; and some, who have large families, how many poor children I maintained. ... Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives; ... I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits.<ref>Thoreau ''Walden'' (1854)</ref>}}

Recent criticism has accused Thoreau of hypocrisy, [[misanthropy]], and being [[sanctimonious]], based on his writings in ''Walden'',<ref name=neworker1>{{cite magazine|url=http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/pond-scum |title=Henry David Thoreau, Hypocrite |last1=Schultz |first1=Kathryn |date=October 19, 2015 |magazine=The New Yorker |access-date=October 19, 2015 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151019170355/http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/pond-scum |archive-date=October 19, 2015 }}</ref> although these criticisms have been regarded as highly selective.<ref name=medium1>{{cite web|url=https://medium.com/@TheNewThoreau/why-do-we-love-thoreau-because-he-was-right-175251814c |title=Why do we love Thoreau? Because he was right. |date=October 19, 2015 |publisher=Medium |access-date=October 19, 2015 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151019170355/https://medium.com/%40TheNewThoreau/why-do-we-love-thoreau-because-he-was-right-175251814c |archive-date=October 19, 2015 }}</ref><ref name=newrepublic>{{cite magazine|url=https://newrepublic.com/article/123151/defense-thoreau |title=Henry David Thoreau's Radical Optimism |first1=Jonathan |last1=Malesic |date=October 19, 2015 |magazine=New Republic |access-date=October 19, 2015 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151019204535/http://www.newrepublic.com/article/123151/defense-thoreau |archive-date=October 19, 2015 }}</ref><ref name=newrepublic2>{{cite magazine|url=https://newrepublic.com/article/123162/everybody-hates-henry-david-thoreau |title=Everybody Hates Henry |first1=Donovan |last1=Hohn |date=October 21, 2015 |magazine=New Republic |access-date=October 21, 2015 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151026134755/http://www.newrepublic.com/article/123162/everybody-hates-henry-david-thoreau |archive-date=October 26, 2015 }}</ref>

==Selected works==
Many of Thoreau's works were not published during his lifetime, including his journals and numerous unfinished manuscripts.
* ''"Aulus Persius Flaccus"'' (1840)
* ''[[The Service]]'' (1840)
* "[[A Walk to Wachusett]]" (1842)
* "[[Paradise (to be) Regained]]" (1843)
* "The Landlord" (1843)
* "[[Sir Walter Raleigh (essay)|Sir Walter Raleigh]]" (1844)
* "[[Herald of Freedom (essay)|Herald of Freedom]]" (1844)
* "[[Wendell Phillips Before the Concord Lyceum]]" (1845)
* "[[Reform and the Reformers]]" (1846–48)
* "[[Thomas Carlyle and His Works]]" (1847)
* ''[[A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers]]'' (1849)
* "[[Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)|Resistance to Civil Government]]", or "Civil Disobedience"", or "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience"" (1849)
* "An Excursion to Canada" (1853)
* "[[Slavery in Massachusetts]]" (1854)
* ''[[Walden]]'' (1854)
* "[[A Plea for Captain John Brown]]" (1859)
* "[[Remarks After the Hanging of John Brown]]" (1859)
* "[[The Last Days of John Brown]]" (1860)
* "[[Walking (Thoreau)|Walking]]" (1862)
* "Autumnal Tints" (1862)
* "Wild Apples: The History of the Apple Tree" (1862)
* "The Fall of the Leaf" (1863)
* ''[[Excursions (anthology)|Excursions]]'' (1863)
* "[[Life Without Principle]]" (1863)
* "Night and Moonlight" (1863)
* "The Highland Light" (1864)
* ''[[The Maine Woods]]'' (1864)
* "Cape Cod" (1865)
* "Letters to Various Persons" (1865)
* ''[[A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers]]'' (1866)
* "Early Spring in Massachusetts" (1881)
* "Summer" (1884)
* "Winter" (1888)
* "Autumn" (1892)
* ''Miscellanies'' (1894)
* ''Familiar Letters of Henry David Thoreau'' (1894)
* ''Poems of Nature'' (1895)
* ''Some Unpublished Letters of Henry D. and Sophia E. Thoreau'' (1898)
* ''The First and Last Journeys of Thoreau'' (1905)
* ''Journal of Henry David Thoreau'' (1906)
* ''The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau'' edited by Walter Harding and Carl Bode (Washington Square: New York University Press, 1958)
* "The Bluebird Carries the Sky on His Back" (Stanyan, 1970)
* "The Dispersion of Seeds" published as ''Faith in a Seed'' (Island Press, 1993)
* ''The Indian Notebooks'' (1847–1861) [https://www.walden.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/IndianNotebooks-1.pdf selections by Richard F. Fleck]
* ''Wild Fruits'' (Unfinished at his death, W.W. Norton, 1999)

==See also==
* [[American philosophy]]
* [[List of American philosophers]]
* [[List of peace activists]]
* [[Thoreau Society]]
* [[Walden Woods Project]]

==References==
{{Reflist|30em}}

==Further reading==
{{Refbegin}}
* Balthrop‐Lewis, Alda. "Exemplarist Environmental Ethics: Thoreau's Political Ascetism against Solution Thinking". ''Journal of Religious Ethics'' 47.3 (2019): 525–550.
* [[Carl Bode|Bode, Carl]]. ''Best of Thoreau's Journals''. Southern Illinois University Press. 1967.
* Botkin, Daniel. ''No Man's Garden''
* Buell, Lawrence. ''The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture'' (Harvard UP, 1995)
* Cafaro, Philip. ''Thoreau's Living Ethics: "Walden" and the Pursuit of Virtue'' (U of Georgia Press, 2004)
* [[Frank Chodorov|Chodorov, Frank]]. [https://mises.org/daily/5033/The-Disarming-Honesty-of-Henry-David-Thoreau ''The Disarming Honesty of Henry David Thoreau''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140914003039/https://mises.org/daily/5033/The-Disarming-Honesty-of-Henry-David-Thoreau |date=September 14, 2014 }}
* Conrad, Randall. [http://thoreau.eserver.org/whowhy.html ''Who He Was & Why He Matters''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061012062735/http://thoreau.eserver.org/whowhy.html |date=October 12, 2006 }}
* Cramer, Jeffrey S. ''Solid Seasons: The Friendship of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson'' (Counterpoint Press, 2019).
* Dean, Bradley P. ed., ''Letters to a Spiritual Seeker''. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004.
* Finley, James S., ed. ''Henry David Thoreau in Context'' (Cambridge UP, 2017).
* Furtak, Rick, Ellsworth, Jonathan, and Reid, James D., eds. ''Thoreau's Importance for Philosophy''. New York: Fordham University Press, 2012.
* Gionfriddo, Michael. "Thoreau, the Work of Breathing, and Building Castles in the Air: Reading Walden's 'Conclusion'". ''The Concord Saunterer'' 25 (2017): 49–90 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/44652797 online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210417023523/https://www.jstor.org/stable/44652797 |date=April 17, 2021 }}.
* Guhr, Sebastian. ''Mr. Lincoln & Mr. Thoreau''. S. Marix Verlag, Wiesbaden 2021.
* Harding, Walter. ''The Days of Henry Thoreau''. Princeton University Press, 1982.
* Hendrick, George. "The Influence of Thoreau's 'Civil Disobedience' on Gandhi's Satyagraha". ''The New England Quarterly'' 29, no. 4 (December 1956). 462–471.
* {{Cite journal |last1=Hess |first1=Scott |title=Walden Pond as Thoreau's Landscape of Genius |journal=Nineteenth-Century Literature |volume=74 |issue=2 |pages=224–250 |date=2019 |language=en |doi=10.1525/ncl.2019.74.2.224 |s2cid=204481348 |issn=0891-9356 }}
* Howarth, William. ''The Book of Concord: Thoreau's Life as a Writer''. Viking Press, 1982
* Judd, Richard W. ''Finding Thoreau: The Meaning of Nature in the Making of an Environmental Icon'' (2018) [https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Thoreau-Meaning-Nature-Environmental/dp/1625343884/ excerpt] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210723101739/https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Thoreau-Meaning-Nature-Environmental/dp/1625343884 |date=July 23, 2021 }}
* McGregor, Robert Kuhn. ''A Wider View of the Universe: Henry Thoreau's Study of Nature'' (U of Illinois Press, 1997).
* [[Annie Russell Marble|Marble, Annie Russell]]. ''Thoreau: His Home, Friends and Books''. New York: AMS Press. 1969 [1902]
* [[Joel Myerson|Myerson, Joel]] et al. ''The Cambridge Companion to Henry David Thoreau''. Cambridge University Press. 1995
* Nash, Roderick. ''Henry David Thoreau, Philosopher''
* Paolucci, Stefano. [https://www.academia.edu/16692328/The_Foundations_of_Thoreaus_Castles_in_the_Air_ "The Foundations of Thoreau's 'Castles in the Air'"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210827194255/https://www.academia.edu/16692328/The_Foundations_of_Thoreaus_Castles_in_the_Air_ |date=August 27, 2021 }}, ''Thoreau Society Bulletin'', No. 290 (Summer 2015), 10. (See also the [https://www.academia.edu/25773131/Stefano_Paolucci_The_Foundations_of_Thoreaus_Castles_in_the_Air_Full_Uncensored_Version_ Full Unedited Version] of the same article.)
* Parrington, Vernon. ''[http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/parrington/vol2/bk03_03_ch03.html Main Current in American Thought] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060901091713/http://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/Parrington/vol2/bk03_03_ch03.html |date=September 1, 2006 }}''. V 2 online. 1927
* Parrington, Vernon L. [http://thoreau.eserver.org/currents.html ''Henry Thoreau: Transcendental Economist''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070612042458/http://thoreau.eserver.org/currents.html |date=June 12, 2007 }}
* Petroski, Henry. "H.D. Thoreau, Engineer". ''American Heritage of Invention and Technology'', Vol. 5, No. 2, pp.&nbsp;8–16
* Petrulionis, Sandra Harbert, ed., ''Thoreau in His Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of His Life, Drawn From Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, Friends, and Associates.'' Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2012. {{ISBN|1609380878}}
* [[Robert D. Richardson|Richardson, Robert D.]] ''Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind''. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles. 1986. {{ISBN|0520063465}}
* {{cite encyclopedia |last=Riggenbach |first=Jeff |title=Thoreau, Henry David (1817–1862) |editor-first=Ronald |editor-last=Hamowy |editor-link=Ronald Hamowy |encyclopedia=The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yxNgXs3TkJYC |date=2008 |publisher=[[SAGE Publishing|Sage]] |location=[[Thousand Oaks, California]] |doi=10.4135/9781412965811.n309 |isbn=978-1412965804 |oclc=750831024 |lccn=2008009151 |pages=506–507 |access-date=June 20, 2015 |archive-date=September 30, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200930100756/https://books.google.com/books?id=yxNgXs3TkJYC%2F |url-status=live }}
* {{Cite journal|last=Riggenbach|first=Jeff|title=Henry David Thoreau: Founding Father of American Libertarian Thought|journal=Mises Daily|date=July 15, 2010|url=https://mises.org/daily/4562/Henry-David-Thoreau-Founding-Father-of-American-Libertarian-Thought|access-date=September 13, 2014|archive-date=September 14, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140914000502/https://mises.org/daily/4562/Henry-David-Thoreau-Founding-Father-of-American-Libertarian-Thought|url-status=live}}
* Ridl, Jack. "[http://magazine.scintillapress.com/moose-indian.html Moose. Indian.] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210827194541/https://www.facebook.com/v2.3/plugins/share_button.php?app_id=249643311490&channel=https%3A%2F%2Fstaticxx.facebook.com%2Fx%2Fconnect%2Fxd_arbiter%2F%3Fversion%3D46%23cb%3Df1bcdc517dd912c%26domain%3Dmagazine.scintillapress.com%26is_canvas%3Dfalse%26origin%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fmagazine.scintillapress.com%252Ff3686018c8f8d2%26relation%3Dparent.parent&container_width=0&href=http%3A%2F%2Fmagazine.scintillapress.com%2Fmoose-indian.html&layout=button_count&locale=en_US&sdk=joey |date=August 27, 2021 }}" Scintilla (poem on Thoreau's last words)
* Schneider, Richard ''Civilizing Thoreau: Human Ecology and the Emerging Social Sciences in the Major Works'' [[Rochester, New York]]. Camden House. 2016. {{ISBN|978-1571139603}}
* Smith, David C. "The Transcendental Saunterer: Thoreau and the Search for Self". [[Savannah, Georgia]]: Frederic C. Beil, 1997. {{ISBN|0913720747}}
* Sullivan, Mark W. "Henry David Thoreau in the American Art of the 1950s". ''The Concord Saunterer: A Journal of Thoreau Studies'', New Series, Vol. 18 (2010), pp.&nbsp;68–89.
* Sullivan, Mark W. ''Picturing Thoreau: Henry David Thoreau in American Visual Culture.'' [[Lanham, Maryland]]: Lexington Books, 2015
* [[Alfred I. Tauber|Tauber, Alfred I]]. ''Henry David Thoreau and the Moral Agency of Knowing''. University of California, Berkeley. 2001. {{ISBN|0520239156}}
* [http://www.iep.utm.edu/thoreau/ Henry David Thoreau] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304121233/http://www.iep.utm.edu/thoreau/ |date=March 4, 2016 }}{{nbsp}}– ''[[Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]]''
* [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thoreau/ Henry David Thoreau] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101204075542/http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thoreau/ |date=December 4, 2010 }}{{nbsp}}– ''[[Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]]''
* Thorson, Robert M. ''The Boatman: Henry David Thoreau's River Years'' (Harvard UP, 2017), on his scientific study of the Concord River in the late 1850s.
* Thorson, Robert M. ''Walden's Shore: Henry David Thoreau and Nineteenth-Century Science'' (2015).
* Thorson, Robert M. ''The Guide to Walden Pond: An Exploration of the History, Nature, Landscape, and Literature of One of America's Most Iconic Places'' (2018).
* {{cite journal|last1=Traub|first1=Courtney|title='First-Rate Fellows': Excavating Thoreau's Radical Egalitarian Reflections in a Late Draft of 'Allegash'|journal=The Concord Saunterer: A Journal of Thoreau Studies|date=2015|volume=23|pages=74–96}}
* [[Laura Walls|Walls, Laura Dassow]]. ''Seeing New Worlds: Henry David Thoreau and 19th Century Science''. University of Wisconsin. 1995. {{ISBN|0299147444}}
* [[Laura Walls|Walls, Laura Dassow]]. ''Henry David Thoreau: A Life''. The University of Chicago Press. 2017. {{ISBN|978-0226344690}}
{{Refend}}
* [[John William Ward (professor)|Ward, John William]]. 1969 ''Red, White, and Blue: Men, Books, and Ideas in American Culture''. New York: Oxford University Press

==External links==
{{wikisource|works=or}}
{{Wikiquote}}
{{Commons}}
{{EB1911 poster|Thoreau, Henry David}}
{{Library resources box|onlinebooks=yes|by=yes}}
* [http://www.thoreausociety.org/ The Thoreau Society]
* [http://www.library.ucsb.edu/thoreau/ The Thoreau Edition]
* [https://www.c-span.org/program/c-span-specials/writings-of-emerson-and-thoreau/169366 "Writings of Emerson and Thoreau"] from [[C-SPAN]]'s ''[[American Writers: A Journey Through History]]''

===Texts===
* {{StandardEbooks|Standard Ebooks URL=https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/henry-david-thoreau}}
* {{Gutenberg author | id=54 | name=Henry David Thoreau}}
* {{FadedPage|id=Thoreau, Henry D.|name=Henry D. Thoreau|author=yes}}
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Henry David Thoreau}}
* {{Librivox author |id=371}}
* [https://openlibrary.org/search?q=henry+david+thoreau&author_key=OL19690A Works by Thoreau] at Open Library
* [https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poems/45769 Poems by Thoreau] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171019154300/https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poems/45769 |date=October 19, 2017 }} at the Academy of American Poets
* [http://thoreau.eserver.org/ The Thoreau Reader] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060405032000/http://thoreau.eserver.org/ |date=April 5, 2006 }} by ''[[Thoreau Society|The Thoreau Society]]''
* [https://www.walden.org/thoreau/the-writings-of-henry-david-thoreau-the-digital-collection/ The Writings of Henry David Thoreau] at ''The Walden Woods Project''
* [http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm Scans of Thoreau's Land Surveys] at the Concord Free Public Library
* [http://www.thoreau-online.org/ Henry David Thoreau Online]{{nbsp}}– The Works and Life of Henry D. Thoreau

{{Henry David Thoreau}}
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