Henry David Thoreau

Novelist

Birthday July 12, 1817

Birth Sign Cancer

Birthplace Concord, MA

DEATH DATE May 6, 1862 (44)

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About

American naturalist, philosopher, and author who is best known for Walden, a literary classic that advocates an uncomplicated life in natural surroundings. He was a key figure in the Transcendentalist movement and was also a prominent abolitionist.

Before Fame

He took courses in rhetoric, classics, philosophy, mathematics, and science at Harvard University, but refused to pay the five dollar fee for his diploma. He published his first essays in the early 1840s, at the urging of his friend and mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Trivia

His famous political essay, Civil Disobedience, was published in 1849.

Family Life

He and his two older siblings grew up in Concord, Massachusetts as the children of pencil maker John Thoreau and his wife, Cynthia Dunbar. Henry David Thoreau later built a house in the woods and lived alone in natural surroundings, an experiment that inspired his literary masterpiece, Walden.

Associated With

His works influenced the literary development of Leo Tolstoy.