Most Popular Books by Henry David Thoreau

Accounts of Thoreau''s daily life on the shores of Walden Pond outside Concord, Massachusetts, are interwoven with musings on the virtues of self-reliance and individual freedom, on society, government, and other topics.

Walden ( first published in 1854 as Walden; or, Life in the Woods) is a book by American transcendentalist writer Henry David Thoreau. The text is a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings. The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and-to some degree-a manual for self-reliance. Walden details Thoreau''s experiences over the course of two years, two months, and two days in a cabin he built near Walden Pond amidst woodland owned by his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, near Concord, Massachusetts. Thoreau makes precise scientific observations of nature as well as metaphorical and poetic uses of natural phenomena. He identifies many plants and animals by both their popular and scientific names, records in detail the color and clarity of different bodies of water, precisely dates and describes the freezing and thawing of the pond, and recounts his experiments to measure the depth and shape of the bottom of the supposedly "bottomless" Walden Pond.

Henry David Thoreau''s vision of personal freedom is indelibly etched on the American consciousness. ''We need the tonic of wildness,'' Thoreau wrote in Walden, and by turning his back on town amenities to build a house on Walden Pond in 1845, he helped shape our notions of the individual, subsistence, and a moral relation to nature. Raising white beans and potatoes that he sold to his Concord neighbors, he stayed for two years; his book records both the philosophy he developed while living alone and the facts of his everyday life. Included here with the complete text of Walden are selections from Thoreau''s first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers; ''A Plea for Captain John Brown,'' his eloquent defense of the American abolitionist''s rebellion at Harper''s Ferry, and such masterpieces as his famous essay ''Civil Disobedience,'' in which he describes a night spent in prison for refusing to pay a poll tax to a government that condoned slavery.

Walden by noted transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau, is a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings. The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and manual for self-reliance. First published in 1854, it details Thoreau''s experiences over the course of two years, two months, and two days in a cabin he built near Walden Pond, amidst woodland owned by his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, near Concord, Massachusetts. The book compresses the time into a single calendar year and uses passages of four seasons to symbolize human development.By immersing himself in nature, Thoreau hoped to gain a more objective understanding of society through personal introspection. Simple living and self-sufficiency were Thoreau''s other goals, and the whole project was inspired by transcendentalist philosophy, a central theme of the American Romantic Period.

In 1845, Thoreau moved to a cabin that he built with his own hands along the shores of Walden Pond in Massachusetts. Shedding the trivial ties that he felt bound much of humanity, Thoreau reaped from the land both physically and mentally, and pursued truth in the quiet of nature. In Walden, he explains how separating oneself from the world of men can truly awaken the sleeping self. Thoreau holds fast to the notion that you have not truly existed until you adopt such a lifestyle-and only then can you reenter society, as an enlightened being. These simple but profound musings-as well as "Civil Disobedience," his protest against the government''s interference with civil liberty-have inspired many to embrace his philosophy of individualism and love of nature

To coincide with the bicentennial of Thoreau''s birth and TarcherPerigee''s publication of Expect Great Things: The Life of Henry David Thoreau, here is a sumptuous rediscovery edition of the first illustrated volume of Thoreau''s classic, as originally issued in 1897. In 1897, thirty-five years after Thoreau''s death, Houghton Mifflin issued a two-volume "Holiday Edition" of Walden illustrated with thirty remarkable engravings, daguerreotypes, and period photographs. In 1902 the publisher collected the work into a single volume. Now, to mark the bicentennial of Thoreau''s birth in 1817, this timeless landmark is reproduced with all of the original illustrations and the complete text of his mystical, practical, magisterial record of a life in the woods.

Excursions Henry David Thoreau - Excursions is an 1863 anthology of several essays by American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau. The anthology contains an introduction entitled "Biographical Sketch" in which fellow transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson provides a description of Thoreau.

Cape Cod illustrated Henry David Thoreau - First published in 1908, "Cape Cod" is a collection of articles by Henry David Thoreau based on numerous trips to the Cape in the early 1880s. A fantastic work that walks the reader through the beauty of Cape Cod and the natural wonders that surround it, this volume is not to be missed by lovers of nature writing. Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862) was an American poet, philosopher, essayist, abolitionist, naturalist, development critic, and historian. He was also a leading figure in Transcendentalism, and is best known for his book "Walden", a treatise on simple living in a natural environment. Other notable works by this author include: "The Landlord" (1843), "Reform and the Reformers" (1846-48), and "Slavery in Massachusetts" (1854). Contents include: "The Shipwreck", "Stage-coach Views", "The Plains Of Nauset", "The Beach", "The Wellfleet Oysterman", "The Beach Again", "Across the Cape", "The Highland Light", "The Sea and the Desert", and "Provincetown". Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.

On the Duty of Civil Disobedience Henry David Thoreau - On the Duty of Civil Disobedience is an essay by American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau that was first published in 1849. In it, Thoreau argues that individuals should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that they have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice. Thoreau was motivated in part by his disgust with slavery and the MexicanAmerican War (1846-1848).

Representative sampling of Thoreau''s most frequently read and cited essays: "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" (1849), "Life without Principle" (1863), "Slavery in Massachusetts" (1854), "A Plea for Captain John Brown" (1869) and "Walking" (1862).

Walden, or, Life in the Woods, is an American book written by noted transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau. The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and manual for self-reliance. Published in 1854, it details Thoreau''s experiences over the course of two years in a cabin he built near Walden Pond, amid woodland owned by his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, near Concord, Massachusetts.also known as Life in the Woods, is one of the best-known non-fiction books written by an American. Published in 1854, it details Thoreau''s life for two years and two months in second-growth forest around the shores of Walden Pond, not far from his friends and family in Concord, Massachusetts. Walden was written so that the stay appears to be a year, with expressed seasonal divisions. Thoreau called it an experiment in simple living. Walden is neither a novel nor a true autobiography, but a social critique of the Western World, with each chapter heralding some aspect of humanity that needed to be either renounced or praised.Thoreau lived in his Walden camp but two years, 1845-1847, and, as his narrative clearly shows, by no means exiled himself from home and companions. His hermitage was within easy walking distance of Concord; and, though his seclusion meant privacy at times, he was by no means debarred from society. The life in the woods was a characteristic expression of his stout independence of condition since the act was in a way unique, it transferred something of its unique property to the book which recorded it, and the book is more closely identified with Thoreau''s fame, has done more to give him distinction, than any other of his writings. The book Walden was what William Ellery Channing calls "the log-book of his woodland cruise at Walden." Thoreau himself tells us that the bulk of the book was written in his hermitage. One bit of verse, "Light-winged smoke, Icarian bird," he had printed in The Dial; but nothing else appears to have been garnered from previous publications, and the book has thus a unity of design which helps to preserve its individual force. Walden was not published, however, until 1854, when it was brought out by Ticknor & Fields.

The essay Resistance to Civil Government, also referred to as On the Duty of Civil Disobedience or civil Disobedience for brief, was authored by Henry David Thoreau, an American writer who specialized in transcendentalism. It was initially published in 1849. In it, Thoreau says people shouldn''t allow governments to overrule and weaken their consciences, and that they''ve a responsibility to avoid such acquiescence from making it possible for the authorities to utilize them as agents of injustice. Thoreau''s disdain for slavery and the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) have been elements in his motivation. Here is the complete text of the novel with the followings annotations: *Biographical Information: Original life and, education 1817-1837: Henry David Thoreau was created David Henry Thoreau in Concord, Massachusetts, into probably the "modest New England family" of John Thoreau, a pencil maker, and Cynthia Dunbar. The father of his was of French Protestant descent.The paternal grandfather of his were definitely created on the UK crown dependency island of Jersey. The maternal grandfather of his, Asa Dunbar, led Harvard''s 1766 pupil "Butter Rebellion", the original recorded pupil protest in the American colonies.David Henry was named after his just lately deceased paternal uncle, David Thoreau. He started calling himself Henry David when he finished college; he never ever petitioned to create a legal name change.