Henry David Thoreau (born David Henry Thoreau; July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862) was an American naturalist, writer, and philosopher. A key figure in the transcendentalist movement, he is most famous for his book Walden, which describes living simply in nature, and his essay Civil Disobedience (originally titled Resistance to Civil Government), which argues for refusing to follow unfair laws.

Thoreau wrote more than 20 books, articles, essays, and poems. His important works include writings about nature and philosophy, which helped shape modern ideas about the environment. His writing combines careful observations of nature, personal experiences, clear arguments, symbolism, and historical stories. His style shows a poetic feel, simple philosophical ideas, and a focus on practical details. He also wrote about surviving difficult conditions, such as harsh weather and changes over time, and believed people should avoid waste and false ideas to find what is truly needed in life.

Thoreau was an abolitionist, meaning he worked to end slavery. He gave speeches against laws that forced escaped slaves to be returned to slavery, praised the work of Wendell Phillips, and supported John Brown, an abolitionist. His ideas about refusing to follow unfair laws influenced important people like Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr.

Thoreau is sometimes called an anarchist in later years, but he is better described as a proto-anarchist, meaning his ideas were early steps toward anarchism.

Pronunciation of his name

Amos Bronson Alcott (who wrote in 1860 that "He is rightly named Thorough") and Thoreau's aunt both wrote that "Thoreau" is pronounced like the word "thorough," which is pronounced as /ˈθʌr oʊ/ THURR-oh in General American, but more precisely as /ˈθɔːr oʊ/ THAWR-oh in 19th century New England.

In 1918, Edward Waldo Emerson wrote: "We always called my friend Thórow, the h sounded, and accent on the first syllable."

In the early 20th century, a growing interest in Thoreau's work from people outside the United States led many to believe the name had a foreign origin. This caused modern American English speakers to often pronounce the name as /θəˈroʊ/ thə-ROH, with the stress on the second syllable.

Physical appearance

Thoreau had a notable appearance, with a nose that he referred to as his "most prominent feature." Regarding his appearance and personality, Ellery Channing wrote:

Life

Henry David Thoreau was born David Henry Thoreau in Concord, Massachusetts, to John Thoreau, a pencil maker, and Cynthia Dunbar. His father had French Protestant ancestry. His paternal grandfather was born on the UK crown dependency island of Jersey. His maternal grandfather, Asa Dunbar, led Harvard's 1766 student "Butter rebellion," the first recorded student protest in the American colonies. David Henry was named after his recently deceased paternal uncle, David Thoreau. After finishing college, he began calling himself Henry David and never legally changed his name.

He had two older siblings, Helen and John Jr., and a younger sister, Sophia Thoreau. None of the children married. Helen (1812–1849) died at age 37 from tuberculosis. John Jr. (1814–1842) died at age 27 from tetanus after cutting himself while shaving. Henry David (1817–1862) died at age 44 from tuberculosis. Sophia (1819–1876) lived 14 years after him and died at age 56 from tuberculosis.

Thoreau studied at Harvard College from 1833 to 1837. He lived in Hollis Hall and took classes in rhetoric, classics, philosophy, mathematics, and science. He was a member of the Institute of 1770 (now the Hasty Pudding Club). According to legend, he refused to pay a five-dollar fee (about $161 in today's money) for a Harvard master's diploma. He said Harvard 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." He commented, "Let every sheep keep its own skin," referencing the tradition of using sheepskin vellum for diplomas.

Thoreau's birthplace still exists on Virginia Road in Concord. The house has been restored by the Thoreau Farm Trust, a nonprofit organization, and is now open to the public.

Traditional professions for college graduates—law, the church, business, medicine—did not interest Thoreau. In 1835, he took a leave of absence from Harvard, teaching at a school in Canton, Massachusetts, and living for two years at an earlier version of today's Colonial Inn in Concord. His grandfather owned the earliest of the three buildings later combined. After graduating in 1837, Thoreau joined the Concord public school faculty but resigned after a few weeks rather than administer corporal punishment. He and his brother John opened the Concord Academy, a grammar school, in 1838. They introduced progressive ideas, such as nature walks and visits to local shops and businesses. The school closed when John died from tetanus in 1842 after cutting himself while shaving. He died in Henry's arms.

After graduating, Thoreau returned to Concord, where he met Ralph Waldo Emerson through a mutual friend. Emerson, who was 14 years older, took a paternal and supportive interest in Thoreau, introducing him to local writers and thinkers, including Ellery Channing, Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott, and Nathaniel Hawthorne and his son Julian Hawthorne, who was a boy at the time.

Emerson encouraged Thoreau to contribute essays and poems to The Dial, a quarterly periodical. Thoreau's first essay published in The Dial was "Aulus Persius Flaccus," an essay on the Roman poet and satirist, in July 1840. It included revised passages from his journal, which he began keeping at Emerson's suggestion. The first journal entry, on October 22, 1837, read: " 'What are you doing now?' he asked. 'Do you keep a journal?' So I make my first entry to-day."

Thoreau was a philosopher who studied nature and its connection to the human condition. In his early years, he followed transcendentalism, a philosophy that emphasized personal intuition over religious doctrine and saw nature as a reflection of the spiritual world. Transcendentalists believed that the natural world expressed a deep connection between visible things and human thoughts, as Emerson wrote in Nature (1836).

On April 18, 1841, Thoreau moved in with the Emersons. From 1841 to 1844, he served as the children's tutor, editorial assistant, repairman, and gardener. For a few months in 1843, he lived with William Emerson on Staten Island, tutoring the family's sons while seeking literary contacts in the city, including his future representative, Horace Greeley.

Thoreau returned to Concord and worked in his family's pencil factory, which he continued to manage alongside his writing and other work for most of his adult life. He improved the process of making pencils using clay as a binder, a method known as the Conté process, first patented by Nicolas-Jacques Conté in 1795. Thoreau used graphite from a New Hampshire source purchased by his uncle, Charles Dunbar, and another source from Tantiusques, a mine operated by Native Americans in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. Later, he converted the factory to produce plumbago, a name for graphite, used in electrotyping.

After returning to Concord, Thoreau experienced a restless period. In April 1844, he and his friend Edward Hoar accidentally started a fire that burned 300 acres (120 hectares) of Walden Woods.

— Henry David Thoreau, "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For," in Walden

Thoreau felt the need to focus more on his writing. In 1845, 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." On July 4, 1845, Thoreau began a two-year experiment in simple living, moving to a small house he built on land owned by Emerson in a second-growth forest near Walden Pond. His request to build a hut on Flints Pond, near his friend Charles Stearns Wheeler, was denied due to the Fairhaven Bay incident. The house was on 14 acres (5.7 hectares) of land Emerson had purchased, 1.5 miles (2.5 kilometers) from his family home. While there, he wrote his only extended piece of literary criticism, "Thomas Carlyle and His Works."

On July 24 or 25, 1846, Thoreau met the local tax collector, Sam Staples, who asked him to pay six years of delinquent poll taxes. Th

Ideas and identity

Henry David Thoreau supported recreational activities like hiking and canoeing. He promoted protecting natural resources on private land and preserving wilderness as public land. He was skilled at canoeing; Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote that Thoreau handled a boat so well, even with one paddle, that it seemed to move by his will alone.

Thoreau was not a strict vegetarian, but he preferred a plant-based diet and believed it helped improve self-discipline. In Walden, he wrote that eating animal food felt unclean and unnecessary, as simple foods like bread or potatoes could provide the same nourishment with less effort.

Thoreau did not reject civilization or fully embrace wilderness. Instead, he believed in a balance between nature and human life. He saw himself as a teacher who could guide people toward understanding the importance of both nature and society. He found beauty in nearby swamps and forests but also valued partially cultivated areas. He once said that traveling through logger paths or Indian trails in Maine was his idea of being in the wilderness, even though he also hiked on untouched land.

Environmental historian Roderick Nash wrote that Thoreau’s 1846 trip to Maine changed his view of wilderness. He had hoped to find untouched, ancient America, but instead, he felt a deeper respect for civilization and the need for balance between the two.

Thoreau believed that water was the best drink for a wise person and avoided alcohol. He wrote, "I would fain keep sober always… Of all ebriosity, who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes?"

Thoreau never married or had children. In 1840, he proposed to Ellen Sewall, but she refused. Later, Sophia Foord proposed to him, but he turned her down.

Scholars have debated Thoreau’s sexuality, with some calling him heterosexual, homosexual, or asexual. There is no evidence he had physical relationships with anyone. Some believe his writings contain hints of same-sex feelings, but others disagree. For example, a poem called "Sympathy" may have been inspired by a boy named Edmund Sewall, though it is unclear. Another part of Walden praises a French-Canadian woodchopper, with references to ancient Greek figures, which some scholars say reflects inner conflict. Thoreau’s journal also mentions a deep connection to a friend, suggesting he valued close relationships.

Thoreau strongly opposed slavery and supported the abolitionist movement. He helped free enslaved people through the Underground Railroad, spoke out against the Fugitive Slave Law, and supported John Brown, a radical abolitionist. After Brown’s failed raid on Harpers Ferry, Thoreau compared the U.S. government to Pontius Pilate and said Brown’s execution was like Jesus’s crucifixion.

Thoreau believed in limited government and individual freedom. He thought people could improve society through self-discipline but rejected extreme ideas like anarchism. He wrote, "I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government." He believed governments should respect individual rights and saw the evolution from monarchy to democracy as progress.

In A Yankee in Canada, Thoreau criticized British rule and Catholicism, arguing that authority had suppressed people’s creativity and independence. He doubted there would be a revolution in Canada’s St. Lawrence River valley.

Thoreau supported both violent and nonviolent resistance to unfair authority. He admired John Brown’s violent actions but also practiced nonviolent resistance, like refusing to pay taxes in protest of slavery. He warned against passivity, saying, "Let not our Peace be proclaimed by the rust on our swords…"

Thoreau opposed the Mexican-American War, not because he was a pacifist, but because he believed the war was unjust and aimed to expand slavery.

Thoreau had mixed feelings about industrialization and capitalism. He admired commerce’s confidence and global connections but criticized the factory system. He supported protecting animals and wild areas, free trade, and using taxes to fund schools and roads. He opposed slavery, Native American subjugation, and what today might be called consumerism or wasteful technology use.

While Thoreau was never officially diagnosed with autism or a related condition, some people believe his behavior and writing style show traits similar to those seen in autism.

Influence

Henry David Thoreau’s political writings did not have much influence during his lifetime. His contemporaries did not see him as a theorist or a radical; instead, they viewed him as a naturalist. Many people ignored or dismissed his political essays, including “Civil Disobedience.” The only two complete books published during his lifetime, Walden and A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849), both focused on nature, a subject Thoreau loved. His obituary was grouped with others in an 1862 yearbook, rather than being a separate article. For many years, critics and the public either ignored or disliked Thoreau’s work. However, the publication of journal excerpts by his friend H.G.O. Blake in the 1880s and a complete collection of Thoreau’s works by the Riverside Press between 1893 and 1906 led to what literary historian F.L. Pattee called a “Thoreau cult.”

Thoreau’s writings later influenced many public figures. Political leaders and reformers, such as Mohandas Gandhi, U.S. President John F. Kennedy, civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr., U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, and Russian author Leo Tolstoy, said they were strongly affected by Thoreau’s work, especially “Civil Disobedience.” Right-wing theorist Frank Chodorov also praised Thoreau, dedicating an entire issue of his magazine, Analysis, to his work.

Thoreau also influenced many artists and authors, including Edward Abbey, Willa Cather, Marcel Proust, William Butler Yeats, Sinclair Lewis, Ernest Hemingway, Upton Sinclair, E. B. White, Lewis Mumford, Frank Lloyd Wright, Alexander Posey, and Gustav Stickley. He 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, whom Publishers Weekly called “the modern Thoreau.”

Thoreau’s friend William Ellery Channing published the first biography of Thoreau, Thoreau the Poet-Naturalist, in 1873. English writer Henry Stephens Salt wrote a biography of Thoreau in 1890, which helped spread Thoreau’s ideas in Britain. George Bernard Shaw, Edward Carpenter, and Robert Blatchford became Thoreau supporters after reading Salt’s work.

Mohandas Gandhi first read Walden in 1906 while working as a civil rights activist in Johannesburg, South Africa. He first read “Civil Disobedience” while in a South African prison for peacefully protesting discrimination against Indians in the Transvaal. The essay deeply affected Gandhi, who wrote a summary of Thoreau’s argument, calling its logic “unanswerable” and calling Thoreau “one of the greatest and most moral men America has produced.” Gandhi told American reporter Webb Miller that Thoreau’s ideas greatly influenced him and that he recommended studying Thoreau to friends helping him fight for Indian independence. He also said his movement’s name came from Thoreau’s essay On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, written about 80 years earlier.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his autobiography that he first learned about nonviolent resistance by reading “On Civil Disobedience” in 1944 while attending Morehouse College.

American psychologist B. F. Skinner carried a copy of Walden with him in his youth. In his 1948 book Walden Two, Skinner described a fictional utopian community inspired by Thoreau’s life. Thoreau and his Transcendentalist friends from Concord, Massachusetts, also inspired American composer Charles Ives. His 1915 Piano Sonata No. 2, called the Concord Sonata, includes musical depictions of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thoreau and features a flute part, Thoreau’s favorite instrument.

Actor Ron Thompson portrayed Henry David Thoreau in the 1976 NBC television series The Rebels.

Thoreau’s ideas influenced various groups in the anarchist movement. Emma Goldman called him “the greatest American anarchist.” Green anarchism and anarcho-primitivism drew inspiration and ecological ideas from Thoreau’s writings. John Zerzan included Thoreau’s 1863 work Excursions in a collection of anarcho-primitivist writings titled Against Civilization: Readings and Reflections. Murray Rothbard, founder of anarcho-capitalism, called Thoreau one of his movement’s “great intellectual heroes.” Thoreau also influenced late 19th-century anarchist naturism and individualist anarchist circles in Spain, France, and Portugal.

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of his birth, publishers released new editions of Thoreau’s work, including 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. The U.S. Postal Service honored Thoreau with a commemorative stamp on May 23, 2017, in Concord, Massachusetts.

Critical reception

Henry David Thoreau's work and career were not widely noticed by people living at the same time as him until 1865. That year, the North American Review published an essay by James Russell Lowell, who wrote about several papers by Thoreau that Ralph Waldo Emerson had collected and edited. Lowell's essay, titled "Letters to Various Persons," was later included in his book "My Study Windows." In this essay, Lowell criticized Thoreau as a person who lacked humor and used common ideas, a person who focused too much on emotions but had little imagination, and called him "Diogenes in his barrel," meaning someone who resents things they cannot achieve. Lowell's harsh analysis influenced Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, who described 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."

Nathaniel Hawthorne had mixed feelings about Thoreau. He wrote that Thoreau was "a keen and delicate observer of nature—a genuine observer," which he believed was a rare quality, even rarer than being an original poet. He also noted that nature seemed to favor Thoreau, showing him secrets few others could witness. However, Hawthorne also wrote that Thoreau "repudiated all regular modes of getting a living" and seemed to want to live a simple, almost Indian-like life among people in modern society.

In a similar way, poet John Greenleaf Whittier strongly disliked what he called the "wicked" and "heathenish" message of Thoreau's book Walden. He claimed that Thoreau wanted people to "lower themselves to the level of a woodchuck and walk on four legs."

In response to these criticisms, the English novelist George Eliot, writing many years later for the Westminster Review, described such critics as uninspired and narrow-minded.

Thoreau himself also addressed the criticism in a paragraph of his work Walden, pointing out what he believed was the unimportant nature of their questions.

Recent criticism has accused Thoreau of being hypocritical, disliking people, and acting superior, based on his writings in Walden. However, these criticisms have been seen as overly selective.

Selected works

Many of Henry David Thoreau's writings were not published during his lifetime. These include his journals and many unfinished works. Below is a list of his published works, along with their publication years:

• "Aulus Persius Flaccus" (1840)
• The Service (1840)
• "A Walk to Wachusett" (1842)
• "Paradise (to be) Regained" (1843)
• "The Landlord" (1843)
• "Sir Walter Raleigh" (1844)
• "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)
• "Resistance to Civil Government," also known as "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" (1862)
• "Autumnal Tints" (1862)
• "Wild Apples: The History of the Apple Tree" (1862)
• "The Fall of the Leaf" (1863)
• 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 (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), selections by Richard F. Fleck
• Wild Fruits (unfinished at his death, W.W. Norton, 1999)