Henry David Thoreau

Richard Schneider (Wartburg College)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.2: American (US) Writing and Culture: The Nineteenth Century, 1783-1900.
Vol. editors: J. Michael Duvall (College of Charleston), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Tony Papanikolas (San Jose State University)

Dates

Born 12 Jul 1817
Died 6 May 1862
Activity 1837-1862

Places

Born in United States
Active in United States

Activities

Primary

Autobiographer
Essayist
Travel writer

Other

Historian / Chronicler
Natural scientist
Poet
Scholar
Teacher/ Professor

Resources

Thoreau's Works

Save to Bookshelf

Henry David Thoreau was one of the most important prose writers of the nineteenth-century United States. His

Walden

provides one of the most passionate, deep and affecting evocations of the value of living simply and close to nature, and his essay “Resistance to Civil Government” [“Civil Disobedience”] provides one of the most trenchant democratic critiques of democracy and has influenced many pacifists and exponents of non-violent protest.

Henry David Thoreau (christened David Henry) was born on July 12, 1817, to John and Cynthia Dunbar Thoreau in Concord, Massachusetts. His father was at first a merchant and later a manufacturer of pencils, and his mother kept a boardinghouse in their home. His parents instilled in him an early love of the outdoors by taking their family on

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

3072 words

Citation: Schneider, Richard. "Henry David Thoreau". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 May 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4391, accessed 21 November 2024.]

View recommended reading for this article