Author Snapshot: Thoreau, HD
Author Snapshot Biography of Henry David Throeau
A brief snapshot biography of the life and works of American Author Henry David Thoreau.
Henry David Thoreau is a true native of Massachusetts, and the pride of his hometown of Concord, where he was born in 1817. A writer and poet, Thoreau's quintessential work remains Walden: Or, Life In The Woods, written while staying in fellow Concordian Ralph Waldo Emerson's cabin on Walden Pond.
While obtaining his degree from Harvard, Thoreau began keeping journals, which eventually became the cornerstone of his writing. His ethics, well demonstrated in his writing, could be seen in the way he lived his life as well. In two famous examples, he quit his Concord teaching position in protest against the whipping of students, and in later years was jailed for refusal to pay a poll tax that was meant to finance the United States - Mexican War.
Thoreau supported himself in a variety of ways throughout his life: opening a school with his brother in Concord, which then closed upon his brother's death; working in his family's pencil factory; taking odd jobs as a handyman; acting as tutor to the Emerson family; giving lectures at the Concord Lyceum; and taking occasional surveying jobs. All of his jobs, however; were in the end a means to support his writing (and many of his experiences became fodder for his writing).
He was not widely known in America until after his death from tuberculosis in 1862, though he did write for Emerson's Transcendentalist publication Dial. Years after his death, his work On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience would influence both Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr in their movements to promote change through passive resistance to an unjust regime.
Online Resources on Henry David Thoreau:
• Concord, Massachusetts Walden Pond Exhibit
• Read Walden: Or, Life In The woods
• Read Civil Disobedience
• Read Slavery In Massachusetts
• Read A Plea For Captain John Brown
• Read Walking
• The Thoreau Reader: Complete Online Text of Four Books and Several Essays By Henry David Thoreau
• The Blog of Henry David Thoreau
• Quotes from Henry David Thoreau
• Thoreau Pages at The Free Library Online
• Reasources and Lesson Plans for Teacher and Homeschoolers
Technorati Tags: American Fiction Henry David Thoreau Snapshot Biography
