The Maine Woods. Cape Cod. Boston: Thayer and Eldridge, Posthumously Published Essays " Walking. The book is a complex work that is part memoir, part sermon, part manifesto and, at its heart, is about how to live a full and meaningful life amid a world full of drudgery and meaningless distractions. Walden was moderately successful when it was published, but took five years to sell 2, copies.
It has since become an American classic. The book received a number of favorable reviews when it was originally published in , though its unique perspective and subject matter perplexed many reviewers. Thoreau — is undoubtedly a man of genius. It is not possible to open twenty pages without finding plentiful indications of that fact. Unfortunately, however, he is an erratic genius, thoroughly impracticable, and apt to confuse rather than arrange the order of things, mental and physical…Mr.
Thoreau is a good writer, possessed of great comic powers, and able to describe accurately many peculiar phases of nature. But the present work will fail to satisfy any class of readers. The literary man may be pleased with the style, but he will surely lament the selfish animus of the book. As beloved as the book is, modern readers still sometimes struggle with the old-fashioned prose as well as the overall message of the book, as can be seen from the handful of reader reviews on Goodreads and Amazon criticizing it as judgemental, elitist and hard to read.
Nonetheless, some readers who said they initially struggled with the book eventually came to understand and enjoy it, as one reviewer on Goodreads explained:. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws will be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. Civil Disobedience.
Indeed, he is dealing here with the incendiary issues of his time: the Mexican War, the Fugitive Slave Act, the execution of John Brown. That is, he addresses the obligations of the citizen to government, of law to justice, of human beings to one another.
In this collection, he does something more—he asks the most troubling question of human existence: how shall we live our lives in a society that makes being human more and more difficult? In the 20th century, many activists of the time cited the book as a major influence on their own ideas and activism, particularly Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandi and civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr:.
Henry David Thoreau accidentally burned hundreds of acres of woods. In , a year before moving into a house in Walden Woods, the year-old Thoreau was cooking fish he had caught with a friend in the woods outside Concord. The grass around the fire ignited, and the flames burned between and acres of land, thanks to strong winds. Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Thoreau came to know many of the movement's leading figures, including Bronson Alcott and Margaret Fuller.
Emerson acted as a mentor to Thoreau and supported him in many ways. For a time, Thoreau lived with Emerson as a caretaker for his home. Emerson also used his influence to promote Thoreau's literary efforts.
Some of Thoreau's first works were published in The Dial , a Transcendentalist magazine. And Emerson gave Thoreau access to the lands that would inspire one of his greatest works. In , Thoreau built a small home for himself on Walden Pond, on property owned by Emerson. He spent more than two years there. Seeking a simpler type of life, Thoreau flipped the standard routine of the times.
He experimented with working as little as possible rather than engage in the pattern of six days on with one day off.
Sometimes Thoreau worked as a land surveyor or in the pencil factory. He felt that this new approach helped him avoid the misery he saw around him. His schedule gave him plenty of time to devote to his philosophical and literary interests. The book drew from a boating trip he took with his brother John in Thoreau eventually started writing about his Walden Pond experiment as well.
Many were curious about his revolutionary lifestyle, and this interest provided the creative spark for a collection of essays. Published in , Walden; or, Life in the Woods espoused living a life close to nature.
The book was a modest success, but it wasn't until much later that the book reached a larger audience. Over the years, Walden has inspired and informed the work of naturalists, environmentalists and writers.
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