Walden
Life in the Woods
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. 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.
Today, despite criticisms, Walden stands as one of America's most celebrated works of literature. John Updike wrote of Walden, "A century and a half after its publication, Walden has become such a totem of the back-to-nature, preservationist, anti-business, civil-disobedience mindset, and Thoreau so vivid a protester, so perfect a crank and hermit saint, that the book risks being as revered and unread as the Bible." The American psychologist B. F. Skinner wrote that he carried a copy of Walden with him in his youth, and eventually wrote Walden Two in 1945, a fictional utopia about 1,000 members who live together in a Thoreau-inspired community.
Excerpted from Walden on Wikipedia.
Walden; or, Life in the Woods
| Author | Henry David Thoreau |
| Country | United States |
| Genre | Memoir |
| Copyright | Public domain worldwide. |
| Book cover | Thanks to Canva |
| Ebooks | Project Gutenberg |
| Scans | Google-digitized |
| Audio | Librivox | Internet Archive Reader: Gord Mackenzie 1a 1b 1c 1d 1e 2a 2b 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 |
| Read online | Walden; or, Life in the Woods |