Wild Thing: A New Biography of Thoreau
A quiet bombshell of a biography that reclaims a revolutionary Thoreau for the 21st century.
Henry David Thoreau: A Life by Laura Dassow Walls. , pages.
A FEW WEEKS AGO, I opened the door of my mailbox to find a quiet bombshell waiting. It weighed two pounds and came wrapped in brown paper, stamped “media mail,” that, when torn away, revealed the daguerreotype portrait of a man rumpled, whiskery, and sad-eyed, six years from his tubercular death. This is the cover of Henry David Thoreau: A Life, a new, page biography by the literary scholar Laura Dassow Walls.
Thoreau has always been too much for some people. How to make sense of a man who not only penned one of the most famous works of American literature, but was also a cutting-edge scientist, a visionary political theorist, a highly disciplined land surveyor, a radical abolitionist, and an inventor who helped make J. Thoreau & Co.’s pencils the most widely sought in the United States? He could be witty, abstruse, amenable, cryptic, and cutting, all in the course of an evening’s conversation. He has left thousands of pages of writing to us in books, essays, poems, maps
Henry David Thoreau
()
Who Was Henry David Thoreau?
Henry David Thoreau began writing nature poetry in the s, with poet Ralph Waldo Emerson as a mentor and friend. In he began his famous two-year stay on Walden Pond, which he wrote about in his masterwork, Walden. He also became known for his beliefs in Transcendentalism and civil disobedience and was a dedicated abolitionist.
Early Life
One of America's most famous writers, Henry David Thoreau is remembered for his philosophical and naturalist writings. He was born and raised in Concord, Massachusetts, along with his older siblings John and Helen and younger sister Sophia. His father operated a local pencil factory, and his mother rented out parts of the family's home to boarders.
A bright student, Thoreau eventually went to Harvard College (now Harvard University). There he studied Greek and Latin as well as German. According to some reports, Thoreau had to take a break from his schooling for a time because of illness. He graduated from college in and struggled with what do to next. At the time, an educated man like Thoreau might pursue a career in law or medicine or in the church. Other college graduates went into
Laura Walls
Biography
Laura Dassow Walls is the author of Henry David Thoreau: A Life, published by the University of Chicago Press in July , in time to honor Thoreau’s th birthday. This book, the first full-length, comprehensive biography of Thoreau in a generation, draws on extensive new research and the full range of Thoreau’s published and unpublished writings to present Thoreau as vigorously alive in all his quirks and contradictions—fully embedded in his place and time, yet speaking powerfully to the problems and perils of today.
Professor Walls works in the field of literature and science, with a special concentration on Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and on American Transcendentalism more generally. Her quest to understand 19th-century American literature in its broad political, historical, and philosophical contexts has led to a continuing interest in British and German writers, philosophers, and scientists as well, particularly the German natural scientist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt. Her book The Passage to Cosmos: Alexander von Humboldt and the Shaping of America (Chicago ) traces the Humboldt network from Germany to the Americas in scienc
Henry David Thoreau
1. Life and Writings
Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts in and died there in , at the age of forty-four. Like that of his contemporary Søren Kierkegaard, Thoreau’s intellectual career unfolded in a close and polemical relation to the town in which he spent almost his entire life. After graduating from Harvard in , he struck up a friendship with fellow Concord resident Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose essay “Nature” he had first encountered earlier that year. Although the two American thinkers had a turbulent relationship due to serious philosophical and personal differences, they had a profound and lasting effect upon one another. It was in the fall of that Thoreau made his first entries in the multivolume journal he would keep for the rest of his life. Most of his published writings were developed from notes that first appeared on these pages, and Thoreau subsequently revised many entries, suggesting that his journal can be considered a finished work in itself. During his lifetime he published only two books, along with numerous shorter essays that were first delivered as lectures. He lived a simple and relatively quiet life, ma
Biographies you may also like
Isaac newton mini biography of christopher Isaac Newton was an English scientist and mathematician. He made major contributions in mathematics and physics (the study of the relationship between matter and energy) and .
Alexander hamilton biography banking As the nation's first secretary of the treasury under President George Washington (–; served –97; see entry in volume 2), Alexander Hamilton mapped out an .
Irsa demneri biography of william Endi Demneri, crowned Miss Universe Albania , is an Albanian model. She is set to represent her country at the prestigious Miss Universe She was born on 31 July Missing: william.
Brij bedi biography template Discover the lifestyle, husband, net worth, family, cars, height, age, house, and biography of Kiran Bedi. Learn about her groundbreaking career as India’s first female IPS officer and her social g: template.
Harishree mehta biography template Use the best editable biography templates to gather information for your journalistic, literary, or research projects. Enter our online editor now and download your personalized biography Missing: harishree mehta.
Elon lindenstrauss biography of mahatma Elon Lindenstrauss is a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Einstein Institute of Mathematics and the first Israeli to receive the Fields Medal, considered the Nobel Prize of Missing: mahatma.