Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau, was born into a modest New England family in Concord, Mass. Thoreau went to Harvard, studying rhetoric and philosophy, though he reportedly refused to pay the five-dollar fee for a Harvard diploma. After graduation, Thoreau moved back to Concord, where he met transcendentalist writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, who encouraged Thoreau to publish his essays and poems. In 1845, Thoreau embarked on a two-year experiment in “simple living,” moving into a small cabin owned by Emerson at Walden Pond. It was here where he would write his most influential work, Walden. Thoreau would also become known for his political essay Civil Disobedience. The writer died in 1862 at age 44 of tuberculosis.