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111-656: From the 1830s through at least the 1860s, the Lyceum arranged lectures from notables such as: Ralph Waldo Emerson , Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. , "the two Everetts, Choate, Sumner, Rantoul, Winthrop, Colfax, Greely, ... Parker, Curtis, Phillips, Bayard Taylor , Dr. Holland, Chapin, Starr King , Hillard, ... Beecher, Giles, Gough, Dr. Hayes, the Arctic explorer, Burlingame, ... Alger, Whipple, Murdoch, Vanderhoff, Bancroft, and Dana." From 1830, "meetings were held in Union Hall ... until 1844 when

222-586: A binder. 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

333-532: 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." 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

444-487: A community based on Utopian ideals inspired in part by Transcendentalism. The farm would run based on a communal effort, using no animals for labor; its participants would eat no meat and use no wool or leather. Emerson said he felt "sad at heart" for not engaging in the experiment himself. Even so, he did not feel Fruitlands would be a success. "Their whole doctrine is spiritual", he wrote, "but they always end with saying, Give us much land and money". Even Alcott admitted he

555-762: A different work from the 1836 essay of the same name. Emerson made a living as a popular lecturer in New England and much of the rest of the country. He had begun lecturing in 1833; by the 1850s he was giving as many as 80 lectures per year. He addressed the Boston Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge and the Gloucester Lyceum , among others. Emerson spoke on a wide variety of subjects, and many of his essays grew out of his lectures. He charged between $ 10 and $ 50 for each appearance, bringing him as much as $ 2,000 in

666-487: A further $ 11,674.49 in July 1837 (equivalent to $ 314,374 in 2023). In 1834, he considered that he had an income of $ 1,200 a year from the initial payment of the estate, equivalent to what he had earned as a pastor. On September 8, 1836, the day before the publication of Nature , Emerson met with Frederic Henry Hedge , George Putnam , and George Ripley to plan periodic gatherings of other like-minded intellectuals. This

777-407: A journal entry dated March 29, 1832, he wrote, "I visited Ellen's tomb & opened the coffin." Boston's Second Church invited Emerson to serve as its junior pastor, and he was ordained on January 11, 1829. His initial salary was $ 1,200 per year (equivalent to $ 34,335 in 2023 ), increasing to $ 1,400 in July, but with his church role he took on other responsibilities: he was the chaplain of

888-517: A journal of his day-to-day detailed description of adventures in the wilderness with his fellow members of the Saturday Club. This two-week camping excursion (1858 in the Adirondacks) brought him face to face with a true wilderness, something he spoke of in his essay " Nature ", published in 1836. He said, "in the wilderness I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages". Emerson

999-470: A journal?' So I make my first entry to-day." Thoreau was a philosopher of nature and its relation to the human condition. In his early years he followed transcendentalism , a loose and eclectic 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

1110-794: A late-night excursion to count the rings of tree stumps during a rainstorm, he became ill with bronchitis . 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 , 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 were fascinated by his tranquil acceptance of death. When his aunt Louisa asked him in his last weeks if he had made his peace with God, Thoreau responded, "I did not know we had ever quarreled." Aware he

1221-562: 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 Colonial Inn in Concord. His grandfather owned the earliest of the three buildings that were later combined. 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 . He and his brother John then opened

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1332-529: A letter of recommendation to meet Thomas Carlyle . He went to Switzerland and had to be dragged by fellow passengers to visit Voltaire 's home in Ferney, "protesting all the way upon the unworthiness of his memory". He then went on to Paris, a "loud modern New York of a place", where he visited the Jardin des Plantes . He was greatly moved by the organization of plants according to Jussieu 's system of classification, and

1443-522: A letter to Lydia Jackson proposing marriage. Her acceptance reached him by mail on the 28th. In July 1835, he bought a house on the Cambridge and Concord Turnpike in Concord, Massachusetts, which he named Bush; it is now open to the public as the Ralph Waldo Emerson House . Emerson quickly became one of the leading citizens in the town. He gave a lecture to commemorate the 200th anniversary of

1554-539: A lifelong inspiration for Thoreau. Emerson's own journal was published in 16 large volumes, in the definitive Harvard University Press edition issued between 1960 and 1982. Some scholars consider the journal to be Emerson's key literary work. In March 1837, Emerson gave a series of lectures on the philosophy of history at the Masonic Temple in Boston. This was the first time he managed a lecture series on his own, and it

1665-528: A list of books he had read and started a journal in a series of notebooks that would be called "Wide World". He took outside jobs to cover his school expenses, including as a waiter for the Junior Commons and as an occasional teacher working with his uncle Samuel and aunt Sarah Ripley in Waltham, Massachusetts . By his senior year, Emerson decided to go by his middle name, Waldo. Emerson served as Class Poet; as

1776-633: A mental collapse as well; he was taken to McLean Asylum in June 1828 at age 25. Although he recovered his mental equilibrium, he died in 1834, apparently from long-standing tuberculosis . Another of Emerson's bright and promising younger brothers, Charles, born in 1808, died in 1836, also of tuberculosis, making him the third young person in Emerson's innermost circle to die in a period of a few years. Emerson met his first wife, Ellen Louisa Tucker, in Concord, New Hampshire, on Christmas Day, 1827, and married her when she

1887-462: A mutual friend. 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 Ellery Channing , Margaret Fuller , 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

1998-592: A neighboring pine grove. He wrote that he was "landlord and water lord of 14 acres, more or less". Emerson was introduced to Indian philosophy through the works of the French philosopher Victor Cousin . In 1845, Emerson's journals show he was reading the Bhagavad Gita and Henry Thomas Colebrooke 's Essays on the Vedas . He was strongly influenced by Vedanta , and much of his writing has strong shades of nondualism . One of

2109-627: A number of speeches and lectures, and welcomed John Brown to his home during Brown's visits to Concord. He voted for Abraham Lincoln in 1860 , but was disappointed that Lincoln was more concerned about preserving the Union than eliminating slavery outright. Once the American Civil War broke out, Emerson made it clear that he believed in immediate emancipation of the slaves. Around this time, in 1860, Emerson published The Conduct of Life , his seventh collection of essays. It "grappled with some of

2220-546: A profound effect on him. She lived with the family off and on and maintained a constant correspondence with Emerson until her death in 1863. Emerson's formal schooling began at the Boston Latin School in 1812, when he was nine. In October 1817, at age 14, Emerson went to Harvard College and was appointed freshman messenger for the president, requiring Emerson to fetch delinquent students and send messages to faculty. Midway through his junior year, Emerson began keeping

2331-543: A protester, so perfect a crank and hermit saint, that the book risks being as revered and unread as the Bible." 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 255 Main Street , where he lived until his death. In the summer of 1850, Thoreau and Channing journeyed from Boston to Montreal and Quebec City . These would be Thoreau's only travels outside

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2442-543: 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", an essay on the Roman poet and satirist, in July 1840. 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

2553-558: A similar refusal, were all pertinent, well considered, and reasoned. I took great pleasure in this deed of Thoreau's. Thoreau revised the lecture into an essay titled " Resistance to Civil Government " (also known as "Civil Disobedience"). It was published by Elizabeth Peabody in the Aesthetic Papers in May 1849. Thoreau had taken up a version of Percy Shelley 's principle in the political poem " The Mask of Anarchy " (1819), which begins with

2664-712: A two-year experiment in simple living , moving to a small house he had built on land owned by Emerson in a 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. The house was in "a pretty pasture and woodlot" of 14 acres (5.7 hectares) that Emerson had bought, 1 + 1 ⁄ 2 miles (2.5 kilometers) from his family home. Whilst there, he wrote his only extended piece of literary criticism, " Thomas Carlyle and His Works ". On July 24 or July 25, 1846, Thoreau ran into

2775-414: A typical winter lecture season. This was more than his earnings from other sources. In some years, he earned as much as $ 900 for a series of six lectures, and in another, for a winter series of talks in Boston, he netted $ 1,600. He eventually gave some 1,500 lectures in his lifetime. His earnings allowed him to expand his property, buying 11 acres (4.5 ha) of land by Walden Pond and a few more acres in

2886-653: Is best which governs not at all;' and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.... But, to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government." Amos Bronson Alcott and Thoreau's aunt each wrote that "Thoreau" is pronounced like the word thorough ( / ˈ θ ʌr oʊ / THURR -oh —in General American , but more precisely / ˈ θ ɔːr oʊ / THOR -oh —in 19th-century New England). Edward Waldo Emerson wrote that

2997-512: Is now called Schoolmaster Hill in Boston's Franklin Park . In 1826, faced with poor health, Emerson went to seek a warmer climate. He first went to Charleston, South Carolina , but found the weather was still too cold. He then went farther south to St. Augustine, Florida , where he took long walks on the beach and began writing poetry. While in St. Augustine he made the acquaintance of Prince Achille Murat ,

3108-530: Is the outward sign of inward spirit, expressing the "radical correspondence of visible things and human thoughts", as Emerson wrote in Nature (1836). On April 18, 1841, Thoreau moved in with the Emersons . 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 , and tutored

3219-526: Is true dying"), and the essay "Experience". In the same month, William James was born, and Emerson agreed to be his godfather . Bronson Alcott announced his plans in November 1842 to find "a farm of a hundred acres in excellent condition with good buildings, a good orchard and grounds". Charles Lane purchased a 90-acre (36 ha) farm in Harvard, Massachusetts, in May 1843 for what would become Fruitlands ,

3330-563: The Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York with nine others: Louis Agassiz , James Russell Lowell , John Holmes, Horatio Woodman , Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar , Jeffries Wyman , Estes Howe , Amos Binney , and William James Stillman . Invited, but unable to make the trip, were Oliver Wendell Holmes , Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , and Charles Eliot Norton , all members of the Saturday Club (Boston, Massachusetts) . This social club

3441-550: The Fugitive Slave Act : The act of Congress is a law which every one of you will break on the earliest occasion—a law which no man can obey, or abet the obeying, without loss of self-respect and forfeiture of the name of gentleman. That summer, he wrote in his diary: This filthy enactment was made in the nineteenth century by people who could read and write. I will not obey it. In February 1852 Emerson, James Freeman Clarke , and William Henry Channing edited an edition of

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3552-452: The Great Lakes region in 1861, when he visited Niagara Falls , Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee , St. Paul and Mackinac Island . 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 Magellan and James Cook ;

3663-531: The Massachusetts Legislature and a member of the Boston School Committee . His church activities kept him busy, though during this period, and facing the imminent death of his wife, he began to doubt his own beliefs. After his wife's death, he began to disagree with the church's methods, writing in his journal in June 1832, "I have sometimes thought that, in order to be a good minister, it

3774-486: The Rev. William Emerson , a Unitarian minister. He was named after his mother's brother Ralph and his father's great-grandmother Rebecca Waldo. Ralph Waldo was the second of five sons who survived into adulthood; the others were William, Edward, Robert Bulkeley, and Charles. Three other children—Phoebe, John Clarke, and Mary Caroline—died in childhood. Emerson was of English ancestry, and his family had been in New England since

3885-463: The arctic explorers John Franklin , Alexander Mackenzie and William Parry ; David Livingstone and Richard Francis Burton on Africa; Lewis and Clark ; and hundreds of lesser-known works by explorers and literate travelers. 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

3996-536: The linchpins of the American romantic movement, and his work has greatly influenced the thinkers, writers, and poets that followed him. "In all my lectures," he wrote, "I have taught one doctrine, namely, the infinitude of the private man." Emerson is also well-known as a mentor and friend of Henry David Thoreau , a fellow Transcendentalist. Emerson was born in Boston , Massachusetts , on May 25, 1803, to Ruth Haskins and

4107-449: 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. He became a land surveyor and continued to write increasingly detailed observations on the natural history of

4218-609: The Bible Society while a slave auction was taking place in the yard outside. He wrote, "One ear therefore heard the glad tidings of great joy, whilst the other was regaled with 'Going, gentlemen, going! ' " ‍ After Harvard, Emerson assisted his brother William in a school for young women established in their mother's house, after he had established his own school in Chelmsford, Massachusetts ; when his brother William went to Göttingen to study law in mid-1824, Ralph Waldo closed

4329-622: The British Isles. He also visited Paris between the French Revolution of 1848 and the bloody June Days . When he arrived, he saw the stumps of trees that had been cut down to form barricades in the February riots. On May 21, he stood on the Champ de Mars in the midst of mass celebrations for concord, peace and labor. He wrote in his journal, "At the end of the year we shall take account, & see if

4440-509: The Concord Academy, a grammar school in Concord, in 1838. 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. He died in Henry's arms. Upon graduation Thoreau returned home to Concord, where he met Ralph Waldo Emerson through

4551-827: The Individual in relation to Government", explaining his tax resistance at the Concord Lyceum . Bronson Alcott attended the lecture, writing in his journal on January 26: 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. 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

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4662-540: The Murray Institute was used for one season prior to the occupancy of the Town Hall." In 1854 "the Lyceum opened its library on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons and evenings, with 1,400 volumes. It was located in the eastern parlor of the residence of F. G. Low on what was then the corner of Spring and Duncan Streets." Patrons could use the library for $ 1 per year; the fee was waived for those unable to afford it. In 1863

4773-586: The Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge"; it was renamed for a collection of essays (which included the first general publication of "Nature") in 1849. Friends urged him to publish the talk, and he did so at his own expense, in an edition of 500 copies, which sold out in a month. In the speech, Emerson declared literary independence in the United States and urged Americans to create a writing style all their own, free from Europe. James Russell Lowell , who

4884-571: The Revolution was worth the trees." The trip left an important imprint on Emerson's later work. His 1856 book English Traits is based largely on observations recorded in his travel journals and notebooks. Emerson later came to see the American Civil War as a "revolution" that shared common ground with the European revolutions of 1848. In a speech in Concord, Massachusetts , on May 3, 1851, Emerson denounced

4995-754: The United States. 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". In fact, this proved an opportunity to contrast American civic spirit and democratic values with a colony apparently ruled by illegitimate religious and military power. Whereas his own country had had its revolution, in Canada history had failed to turn. 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 Voyage of

5106-467: The ability for mankind to realize almost anything, and the relationship between the soul and the surrounding world. Emerson's "nature" was more philosophical than naturalistic : "Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul." Emerson is one of several figures who "took a more pantheist or pandeist approach, by rejecting views of God as separate from the world". He remains among

5217-688: 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 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." Thoreau contracted tuberculosis in 1835 and suffered from it sporadically afterwards. In 1860, following

5328-447: The act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul. The central message Emerson drew from his Asian studies was that "the purpose of life was spiritual transformation and direct experience of divine power, here and now on earth." In 1847–48, he toured

5439-478: The advice of Emerson, using Emerson's publisher, Munroe, who did little to publicize the book. 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. At Emerson's request, he immediately moved back to the Emerson house to help Emerson's wife, Lidian, manage

5550-535: 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." He was not a strict vegetarian, though he said he preferred that diet 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

5661-433: The clearest examples of this can be found in his essay " The Over-soul ": We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but

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5772-519: The college". He commented, "Let every sheep keep its own skin", a reference to 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. The traditional professions open to college graduates—law, the church, business, medicine—did not interest Thoreau, so in 1835 he took

5883-430: The core of his thinking. They include the well-known essays " Self-Reliance ", " The Over-Soul ," " Circles ," " The Poet ," and " Experience ". Together, with "Nature", these essays made the decade from the mid-1830s to the mid-1840s Emerson's most fertile period. Emerson wrote on a number of subjects, never espousing fixed philosophical tenets , but rather, by developing certain ideas, such as individuality , freedom ,

5994-675: The decent black of the pastor, he was free to choose the gown of the lecturer and teacher, of the thinker not confined within the limits of an institution or a tradition." Emerson toured Europe in 1833 and later wrote of his travels in English Traits (1856). He left aboard the brig Jasper on Christmas Day, 1832, sailing first to Malta . During his European trip, he spent several months in Italy, visiting Rome, Florence and Venice, among other cities. When in Rome, he met with John Stuart Mill , who gave him

6105-416: 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

6216-418: The early colonial period, with Emerson being a seventh-generation descendant of Mayflower voyagers John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley through their daughter Hope. Emerson's father died from stomach cancer on May 12, 1811, less than two weeks before Emerson's eighth birthday. Emerson was raised by his mother, with the help of the other women in the family; his aunt Mary Moody Emerson in particular had

6327-466: The establishment and the general Protestant community. He was denounced as an atheist and a poisoner of young men's minds. Despite the roar of critics, he made no reply, leaving others to put forward a defense. He was not invited back to speak at Harvard for another thirty years. The Transcendental group began to publish its flagship journal, The Dial , in July 1840. They planned the journal as early as October 1839, but did not begin work on it until

6438-437: The face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay; at the same time he advocated abandoning waste and illusion in order to discover life's true essential needs. Thoreau was a lifelong abolitionist , delivering lectures that attacked the fugitive slave law while praising the writings of Wendell Phillips and defending the abolitionist John Brown . Thoreau's philosophy of civil disobedience later influenced

6549-451: 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 . 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

6660-487: The famous essay "Self-Reliance". His aunt called it a "strange medley of atheism and false independence", but it gained favorable reviews in London and Paris. This book, and its popular reception, more than any of Emerson's contributions to date laid the groundwork for his international fame. In January 1842 Emerson's first son, Waldo, died of scarlet fever . Emerson wrote of his grief in the poem " Threnody " ("For this losing

6771-481: The first edition of Leaves of Grass stir up significant interest and convinced Whitman to issue a second edition shortly thereafter. This edition quoted a phrase from Emerson's letter, printed in gold leaf on the cover: "I Greet You at the Beginning of a Great Career". Emerson took offense that this letter was made public and later was more critical of the work. In summer 1858, Emerson camped at Follensbee Pond in

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6882-539: 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." Of alcohol, Thoreau wrote, "I would fain keep sober always. ... I believe that water

6993-882: The first recorded student protest in the American colonies. 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. 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, of tetanus after cutting himself while shaving. Henry David (1817–1862) died at age 44, of tuberculosis. Sophia (1819–1876) survived him by 14 years, dying at age 56, of tuberculosis. He studied at Harvard College between 1833 and 1837. He lived in Hollis Hall and took courses in rhetoric , classics, philosophy, mathematics, and science. He

7104-430: The first week of 1840. Unitarian minister George Ripley was the managing editor. Margaret Fuller was the first editor, having been approached by Emerson after several others had declined the role. Fuller stayed on for about two years, when Emerson took over, using the journal to promote talented young writers including Ellery Channing and Thoreau. In 1841 Emerson published Essays , his second book, which included

7215-609: The household while her husband was on an extended trip to Europe. Over several years, as he worked to pay off his debts, he continuously revised the manuscript of what he eventually published as 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

7326-454: The ideas he would later develop in his first published essay, "Nature": Nature is a language and every new fact one learns is a new word; but it is not a language taken to pieces and dead in the dictionary, but the language put together into a most significant and universal sense. I wish to learn this language, not that I may know a new grammar, but that I may read the great book that is written in that tongue. On January 24, 1835, Emerson wrote

7437-759: The library moved to Front Street; the building burned down in 1864. Thereafter it occupied rooms on Middle Street (in the Baptist church), and later on Front Street (in the Babson block). Much of the funding for the library came from "Samuel E. Sawyer, a Boston merchant, but a native of Gloucester." The Lyceum became the Gloucester Lyceum and Sawyer Free Library under a new charter in 1872. 42°36′47″N 70°39′47″W  /  42.613°N 70.663°W  / 42.613; -70.663 Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882), who went by his middle name Waldo,

7548-539: The local tax collector , Sam Staples, who asked him to pay six years of delinquent poll taxes . Thoreau refused because of his opposition to the Mexican–American War and 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. The experience had a strong impact on Thoreau. In January and February 1848, he delivered lectures on "The Rights and Duties of

7659-539: The local laboratory of his Concord experience. Among his famous aphorisms is his advice to "live at home like a traveler". After John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry , many prominent voices in the abolitionist movement distanced themselves from Brown or 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:

7770-424: 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 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 himself a highly skilled canoeist; Nathaniel Hawthorne , after a ride with him, noted that "Mr. Thoreau managed

7881-456: The members of the Saturday Club, raising their interest in this unknown region. James Russell Lowell and William Stillman led the effort to organize a trip to the Adirondacks. They began their journey on August 2, 1858, traveling by train, steamboat, stagecoach , and canoe guide boats. News that these cultured men were living like "Sacs and Sioux" in the wilderness appeared in newspapers across

7992-410: The methods and findings of ecology and environmental history , two sources of modern-day environmentalism. His literary style interweaves close observation of nature, personal experience, pointed rhetoric, symbolic meanings, and historical lore, while displaying a poetic sensibility, philosophical austerity , and attention to practical detail. He was also deeply interested in the idea of survival in

8103-490: The most varied and unusual instructive sayings. Henry David Thoreau was born David Henry Thoreau in Concord, Massachusetts , into the "modest New England family" of John Thoreau, a pencil maker, and Cynthia Dunbar. His father was of French Protestant descent. His paternal grandfather had been born on the UK crown dependency island of Jersey . His maternal grandfather, Asa Dunbar, led Harvard's 1766 student " Butter Rebellion ",

8214-496: The name should be pronounced "Thó-row", with the h sounded and stress on the first syllable. Among modern-day American English speakers, it is perhaps more commonly pronounced / θ ə ˈ r oʊ / thə- ROH —with stress on the second syllable. Thoreau had a distinctive appearance, with a nose that he called his "most prominent feature". Of his appearance and disposition, Ellery Channing wrote: His face, once seen, could not be forgotten. The features were quite marked:

8325-412: The nation. This became known as the " Philosophers Camp ". This event was a landmark in the nineteenth-century intellectual movement, linking nature with art and literature. Although much has been written over many years by scholars and biographers of Emerson's life, little has been written of what has become known as the "Philosophers Camp" at Follensbee Pond. Yet, his epic poem "Adirondac" reads like

8436-410: The nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte . Murat was two years his senior; they became good friends and enjoyed each other's company. The two engaged in enlightening discussions of religion, society, philosophy, and government. Emerson considered Murat an important figure in his intellectual education. While in St. Augustine, Emerson had his first encounter with slavery . At one point, he attended a meeting of

8547-486: The nose aquiline or very Roman, like one of the portraits of 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

8658-552: The pencil factory to produce plumbago, a name for graphite at the time, which was used in the electrotyping process. 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 300 acres (120 hectares) of Walden Woods. 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

8769-627: The political thoughts and actions of notable figures such as Leo Tolstoy , Mahatma Gandhi , and Martin Luther King Jr. Thoreau is sometimes referred to retrospectively as an anarchist , but may perhaps be more properly regarded as a proto-anarchist . In his seminal essay, "Civil Disobedience", Thoreau wrote as follows: "I heartily accept the motto,— 'That government is best which governs least;' and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe,— 'That government

8880-533: The powerful images of the unjust forms of authority of his time and then imagines the stirrings of a radically new form of social action. 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 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. He self-published on

8991-555: The religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, " Nature ". Following this work, he gave a speech entitled " The American Scholar ," in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. considered to be America's "intellectual Declaration of Independence". Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures, first, and then, revised them for print. His first two collections of essays, Essays: First Series (1841) and Essays: Second Series (1844), represent

9102-407: 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. 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

9213-491: The school but continued to teach in Cambridge, Massachusetts , until early 1825. Emerson was accepted into the Harvard Divinity School in late 1824, and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa in 1828. Emerson's brother Edward, two years younger than he, entered the office of the lawyer Daniel Webster , after graduating from Harvard first in his class. Edward's physical health began to deteriorate, and he soon suffered

9324-689: 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 wildness 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 historian Roderick Nash wrote, "Thoreau left Concord in 1846 for

9435-505: The squirrel die or abandon the stash. He credited the squirrel for performing a "great service ... in the economy of the universe." 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

9546-532: The thorniest issues of the moment," and "his experience in the abolition ranks is a telling influence in his conclusions." In these essays Emerson strongly embraced the idea of war as a means of national rebirth: "Civil war, national bankruptcy, or revolution, [are] more rich in the central tones than languid years of prosperity." Henry David Thoreau This is an accepted version of this page Active Defunct Publications Works Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862)

9657-435: The town of Concord on September 12, 1835. Two days later, he married Jackson in her hometown of Plymouth, Massachusetts, and moved to the new home in Concord together with Emerson's mother on September 15. Emerson quickly changed his wife's name to Lidian, and would call her Queenie, and sometimes Asia, and she called him Mr. Emerson. Their children were Waldo, Ellen, Edith, and Edward Waldo Emerson . Edward Waldo Emerson

9768-402: The town, covering an area of 26 square miles (67 square kilometers), 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

9879-459: The way all such objects were related and connected. As Robert D. Richardson says, "Emerson's moment of insight into the interconnectedness of things in the Jardin des Plantes was a moment of almost visionary intensity that pointed him away from theology and toward science." Moving north to England, Emerson met William Wordsworth , Samuel Taylor Coleridge , and Thomas Carlyle . Carlyle in particular

9990-572: The works and letters of Margaret Fuller , who had died in 1850. Within a week of her death, her New York editor, Horace Greeley , suggested to Emerson that a biography of Fuller, to be called Margaret and Her Friends , be prepared quickly "before the interest excited by her sad decease has passed away". Published under the title The Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli , Fuller's words were heavily censored or rewritten. The three editors were not concerned about accuracy; they believed public interest in Fuller

10101-432: 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. Thoreau felt a need to concentrate and work 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." Thus, on July 4, 1845, Thoreau embarked on

10212-453: Was 18 two years later. The couple moved to Boston, with Emerson's mother, Ruth, moving with them to help take care of Ellen, who was already ill with tuberculosis. Less than two years after that, on February 8, 1831, Ellen died, at age 20, after uttering her last words, "I have not forgotten the peace and joy." Emerson was strongly affected by her death and visited her grave in Roxbury daily. In

10323-563: Was a member of the Institute of 1770 (now the Hasty Pudding Club ). According to legend, Thoreau refused to pay the five-dollar fee (approximately equivalent to $ 153 in 2023) 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

10434-599: Was a strong influence on him; Emerson would later serve as an unofficial literary agent in the United States for Carlyle, and in March 1835, he tried to persuade Carlyle to come to America to lecture. The two maintained a correspondence until Carlyle's death in 1881. Emerson returned to the United States on October 9, 1833, and lived with his mother in Newton, Massachusetts . In October 1834, he moved to Concord, Massachusetts , to live with his step-grandfather, Dr. Ezra Ripley , at what

10545-421: Was a student at Harvard at the time, called it "an event without former parallel on our literary annals". Another member of the audience, Reverend John Pierce, called it "an apparently incoherent and unintelligible address". In 1837, Emerson befriended Henry David Thoreau . Though they had likely met as early as 1835, in the fall of 1837, Emerson asked Thoreau, "Do you keep a journal?" The question went on to be

10656-566: Was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist , and poet who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and critical thinking, as well as a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society and conformity . Friedrich Nietzsche thought he was "the most gifted of the Americans," and Walt Whitman called Emerson his "master". Emerson gradually moved away from

10767-561: Was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading transcendentalist , he is best known for his book Walden , a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay " Civil Disobedience " (originally published as "Resistance to Civil Government"), an argument in favor of citizen disobedience against an unjust state. Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry amount to more than 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions are his writings on natural history and philosophy, in which he anticipated

10878-608: Was custom, he presented an original poem on Harvard's Class Day, a month before his official graduation on August 29, 1821, when he was 18. He did not stand out as a student and graduated in the exact middle of his class of 59 people. In the early 1820s, Emerson was a teacher at the School for Young Ladies (which was run by his brother William). He next spent two years living in a cabin in the Canterbury section of Roxbury, Massachusetts , where he wrote and studied nature. In his honor, this area

10989-552: Was dying, Thoreau's last words were "Now comes good sailing", followed by two lone words, "moose" and "Indian". He died on May 6, 1862, at age 44. Amos Bronson Alcott planned the service and read selections from Thoreau's works, and Channing presented a hymn. Emerson wrote the eulogy spoken at the funeral. 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 in Concord, Massachusetts. Most of

11100-421: 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." 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

11211-519: Was invited to Divinity Hall, Harvard Divinity School , to deliver the school's graduation address, which came to be known as the " Divinity School Address ". Emerson discounted biblical miracles and proclaimed that, while Jesus was a great man, he was not God: historical Christianity, he said, had turned Jesus into a "demigod, as the Orientals or the Greeks would describe Osiris or Apollo". His comments outraged

11322-461: Was later named The Old Manse . Given the budding Lyceum movement , which provided lectures on all sorts of topics, Emerson saw a possible career as a lecturer. On November 5, 1833, he made the first of what would eventually be some 1,500 lectures, "The Uses of Natural History", in Boston. This was an expanded account of his experience in Paris. In this lecture, he set out some of his important beliefs and

11433-671: Was mostly a literary membership that met the last Saturday of the month at the Boston Parker House Hotel ( Omni Parker House ). William James Stillman was a painter and founding editor of an art journal called the Crayon. Stillman was born and grew up in Schenectady which was just south of the Adirondack mountains. He later traveled there to paint the wilderness landscape and to fish and hunt. He shared his experiences in this wilderness to

11544-526: Was necessary to leave the ministry. The profession is antiquated. In an altered age, we worship in the dead forms of our forefathers." His disagreements with church officials over the administration of the Communion service and misgivings about public prayer eventually led to his resignation in 1832. As he wrote, "This mode of commemorating Christ is not suitable to me. That is reason enough why I should abandon it." As one Emerson scholar has pointed out, "Doffing

11655-454: Was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise 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

11766-683: Was not prepared for the difficulty in operating Fruitlands. "None of us were prepared to actualize practically the ideal life of which we dreamed. So we fell apart", he wrote. After its failure, Emerson helped buy a farm for Alcott's family in Concord which Alcott named " Hillside ". The Dial ceased publication in April 1844; Horace Greeley reported it as an end to the "most original and thoughtful periodical ever published in this country". In 1844, Emerson published his second collection of essays, Essays: Second Series . This collection included "The Poet", "Experience", "Gifts", and an essay entitled "Nature",

11877-467: Was staunchly opposed to slavery, but he did not appreciate being in the public limelight and was hesitant about lecturing on the subject. In the years leading up to the Civil War, he did give a number of lectures, however, beginning as early as November 1837. A number of his friends and family members were more active abolitionists than he, at first, but from 1844 on he more actively opposed slavery. He gave

11988-441: Was temporary and that she would not survive as a historical figure. Even so, it was the best-selling biography of the decade and went through thirteen editions before the end of the century. Walt Whitman published the innovative poetry collection Leaves of Grass in 1855 and sent a copy to Emerson for his opinion. Emerson responded positively, sending Whitman a flattering five-page letter in response. Emerson's approval helped

12099-416: Was the beginning of his career as a lecturer. The profits from this series of lectures were much larger than when he was paid by an organization to talk, and he continued to manage his own lectures often throughout his lifetime. He eventually gave as many as 80 lectures a year, traveling across the northern United States as far as St. Louis, Des Moines, Minneapolis, and California. On July 15, 1838, Emerson

12210-952: Was the beginning of the Transcendental Club , which served as a center for the movement. Its first official meeting was held on September 19, 1836. On September 1, 1837, women attended a meeting of the Transcendental Club for the first time. Emerson invited Margaret Fuller , Elizabeth Hoar, and Sarah Ripley for dinner at his home before the meeting to ensure that they would be present for the evening get-together. Fuller would prove to be an important figure in Transcendentalism. Emerson anonymously sent his first essay, "Nature", to James Munroe and Company to be published on September 9, 1836. A year later, on August 31, 1837, he delivered his now-famous Phi Beta Kappa address, " The American Scholar ", then entitled "An Oration, Delivered before

12321-525: Was the father of Raymond Emerson . Ellen was named for his first wife, at Lidian's suggestion. He hired Sophia Foord to educate his children. Emerson was poor when he was at Harvard, but was later able to support his family for much of his life. He inherited a fair amount of money after his first wife's death, though he had to file a lawsuit against the Tucker family in 1836 to get it. He received $ 11,600 in May 1834 (equivalent to $ 354,032 in 2023), and

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