Walden and Civil Disobedience

Henry David Thoreau's masterworkWaldenis a collection of his reflections on life and society. In 1845, he moved to a cabin that he built with his own hands along the shores of Walden Pond in Massachusetts.A transcendentalist classic on social responsibility and a manifesto that inspired modern protest movementsCritical of 19th-century America's booming commercialism and industrialism, Henry David Thoreau moved to a small cabin in the woods of Concord, Massachusetts in 1845. Walden, the account of his stay near Walden Pond, conveys at once a naturalist's wonder at the commonplace and a transcendentalist's yearning for spiritual truth and self-reliance. But Thoreau's embrace of solitude and simplicity did not entail a withdrawal from social and political matters. Civil Disobedience, also included in this volume, expresses his antislavery and antiwar sentiments, and has influenced resistance movements worldwide. Both give rewarding insight into a free-minded, principled and idiosyncratic life.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,800 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Henry David Thoreauwas born in Concord, Massachusetts in 1817. He graduated from Harvard in 1837, the same year he began his lifelong Journal. Inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau became a key member of the Transcendentalist movement that included Margaret Fuller and Bronson Alcott. The Transcendentalists' faith in nature was tested by Thoreau between 1845 and 1847 when he lived for twenty-six months in a homemade hut at Walden Pond. While living at Walden, Thoreau worked on the two books published during his lifetime-Walden(1854) andA Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers(1849). Several of his other works, includingThe Maine Woods, Cape Cod, andExcursions, were published posthumously. Thoreau died in Concord, at the age of forty-four, in 1862.Kristen Case teaches at the University of Maine at Farmington, where she is associate professor of English. She is the author of American Pragmatism andPoetic Practice- Crosscurrents from Emerson to Susan Howe (Camden House, 2011) and Little Arias,a collection of poems (New Issues Press, 2015). She is coeditor of Thoreau at 200- Essays andReassessments (Cambridge University Press, 2016) and has published articles on Thoreau, EzraPound, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, and William James. She lives inTemple, Maine.

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