Henry David Thoreau: A Life

Laura Dassow Walls traces the full arc of Henry David Thoreau's life, from his early years in Concord, Massachusetts through his death in 1862 at age forty-four. While Thoreau is often remembered for his experiment living at Walden Pond and the 1854 publication of Walden, Walls presents a more complete portrait of his subject. Thoreau was part of the intellectual circle around his neighbor Ralph Waldo Emerson. Beyond his famous retreat to the woods, he worked as a manual laborer and inventor, pursued naturalist studies, and engaged in radical political activism. Drawing on both published and unpublished writings, Walls examines Thoreau's complexities: his response to his brother's death, his time as a Harvard student, his abolitionist convictions rooted in belief in human freedom, and his early environmental concerns about human carelessness toward nature. Walls situates Thoreau within the broader transformation of American society from a community of farmers and artisans into a commercial nation during his lifetime.