Henry David Thoreau

1
Henry David Thoreau

• By Caroline L.
• Period 5

2
Early Life and Education

• Henry David Thoreau was born on July 12, 1817.
  He was born in Concord, MA. Concord was the
  center of his life.
• He attended Concord Academy from 1828-1833. He
  then attended and graduated from Harvard in 1837.
  He taught in Canton at the Center School but
  resigned to protest of the whipping of students
  as a disciplinary action.
• He helped in his father's pencil factory, and
  then opened a private school in Concord in 1838
  with his brother John Thoreau. This school was
  based on Transcendentalism, the literary and
  philosophical movement adopted by Ralph Waldo
  Emerson, Bronson Alcott, and Orestes Brownson.
  When John became fatally ill, the school was
  closed and Thoreau lived in Emerson's home as a
  handyman while he practiced writing in his
  journal. He also published a few pieces, wrote
  poetry, and lectured at the Concord Lyceum.
• From 1843-1844 he went to Staten Island, New York
  to tutor the children of Emerson's brother,
  William Emerson. He built a small structure on
  Emerson's land alongside Walden Pond. During his
  stay there (from July 4, 1845--Sept 6, 1847), he
  was jailed one night for refusing to pay a poll
  tax meant to support America's war in Mexico. In
  1849 he published an essay on this experience,
  "Resistance to Civil Government' which was later
  known as "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience.
  This essay is about passive resistance to unjust
  laws which inspired Gandhi and Martin Luther King
  Jr.

• He wrote the manuscript for A Week on the Concord
  and Merrimack Rivers in 1849, which was an
  account of a trip he had taken with his brother
  John ten years before. The journal he kept at
  Walden became the source of his most famous book,
  Walden (1854), in which he set forth his ideas on
  how an individual should best live to be in sync
  to his own nature as well as to nature itself.
• After leaving Walden, he lived with Emerson from
  1847-1849 and then for the rest of his life in
  his family home. He occasionally worked at the
  pencil factory and did some surveying. By the
  1850s he had become greatly concerned about
  slavery, and after meeting John Brown in 1857, he
  would write passionately in his defense.
• He lived out his final years with tuberculosis.
  He spent his time preparing his journals and
  manuscripts for later publication.

3
Family

• His parents were John and Cynthia Thoreau.
• He had an older sister and an older brother,
  Helen and John Thoreau Jr. His younger sisters
  name was Sophia.
• His legal name is actually David Henry Thoreau.
  He was named after his uncle who died six weeks
  after he was born.

4
Works

• 1842 Natural History of Massachusetts
• 1849 A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
• 1849 On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience
• 1854 Walden, or Life in the Woods
• Slavery in Massachusetts
• 1859 Plea For John Brown
• 1863 Excursions
• Life Without Principle
• 1864 The Maine Woods
• 1865 Cape Cod
• 1866 Yankee in Canada
• 1884 Summer
• 1887 Winter
• 1895 Poems of Nature
• 1943 Collected Poems
• The Dispersion of Seeds
• Walking

5
Quotes

• Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me
  truth. Walden
• It is never too late to give up your
  prejudices. Walden
• Beware of all enterprises that require new
  clothes.
• We do not enjoy poetry unless we know it to be
  poetry.
• ..as if you could kill time without injuring
  eternity Walden
• If you have built castles in the air, your work
  need not be lost that is where they should
  be.Now put the foundations under them. Walden
• I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all
  to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
  Walden
• However mean your life is, meet it and live it
  do not shun it and call it hard names. Walden
• I should not talk so much about myself if there
  were anybody else whom I knew as well.
  Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the
  narrowness of my experience. Walden

6
Conscience

• Conscience is instinct bred in the house,
  Feeling and Thinking propagate the sin By an
  unnatural breeding in and in. I say, Turn it out
  doors, Into the moors. I love a life whose plot
  is simple, And does not thicken with every
  pimple, A soul so sound no sickly conscience
  binds it, That makes the universe no worse than
  't finds it. I love an earnest soul, Whose
  mighty joy and sorrow Are not drowned in a bowl,
  And brought to life to-morrow That lives one
  tragedy, And not seventy A conscience worth
  keeping Laughing not weeping A conscience
  wise and steady, And forever ready Not
  changing with events, Dealing in compliments A
  conscience exercised about Large things, where
  one may doubt.

• I love a soul not all of wood, Predestinated to
  be good, But true to the backbone Unto itself
  alone, And false to none Born to its own
  affairs, Its own joys and own cares By whom
  the work which God begun Is finished, and not
  undone Taken up where he left off, Whether to
  worship or to scoff If not good, why then evil,
  If not good god, good devil. Goodness! you
  hypocrite, come out of that, Live your life, do
  your work, then take your hat. I have no
  patience towards Such conscientious cowards.
  Give me simple laboring folk, Who love their
  work, Whose virtue is song To cheer God along.

7
Contributions and Recognitions

• Although Thoreau never earned a living off of his
  writings, he was highly recognized after his
  death.
• His primary writing genre was the essay. His
  interests in natural surroundings was reflected
  in most of his writing.
• His book Walden is his best known work.

8
Works Cited

• www.americanpoems.com
• www.transcendentalists.com
• http//eserver.org/thoreau/images.html
• http//www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/index.
  html
• www.poets.org