Henry David Thoreau

American · 1817–1862

Henry David Thoreau was an American essayist, naturalist, and philosopher closely associated with the transcendentalist movement and a friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson. His best-known book, Walden (1854), records the roughly two years he spent living in a cabin near Walden Pond in Massachusetts, an experiment in self-reliance, frugality, and close observation of the natural world. His essay "Civil Disobedience" (1849) influenced later figures from Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr. Thoreau's blend of voluntary simplicity, ecological attention, and individualism has made him a perennial reference point for everyone from environmentalists to early-retirement minimalists.

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