Henry David Thoreau (1817-62) was a man eager to stand back and away from the drama of life to participate in it not as actor, but a spectator, in a hope to, at the very least come to an analysis of the very meaning of life and how one could live it to the best.

Born in Concord, Massachusetts, he spent most of his life in the area as a writer, teacher, essayist and orator, earning extra income by working as a gardener, pencil-maker and surveyor.He became known as an individualist who was often scornful of authority. One of his greatest ideological influences came from Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Shortly after his graduation from Harvard in 1837, he and his brother John opened their own school in Concord, and operated it according to the principles of TRANSCENDENTALISM. Thoreau was also an avid contributor to the Transcendentalist journal, THE DIAL; and he was also an occasional speaker at the Concord Lyceum, which he had started in 1838. His mature writing, however, dates from the two-year period (1845-7) when he lived at Walden Pond. The experience at Waiden itself, and the journal he kept there, became the source of WAIDEN (1854), a lengthy autobiographical essay which sets forth many of his ideas on how the individual should live life to the best advantage of his nature and principles. Another of his best-known works, ON THE DUTY OF CIVII DISOBEDIENCE (1849), reflects similar values.

Thoreau was arrested in the summer of 1846 for refusing to pay his poll tax, and the night he spent in jail prompted his reflections on a man's moral right passively to resist an unjust law.

Image reference: The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry
Text reference: Thoreau, Henry David. (2006). In Cambridge Guide to Literature in English 3rd edition. CREDO Reference