The Days of Henry Thoreau

The Days of Henry Thoreau PDF Author: Walter Harding
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400875560
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 535

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Book Description
Henry David Thoreau is generally remembered as the author of Walden and "Civil Disobedience," a recluse of the woods and a political protester who once went to jail. To his contemporaries he was a minor disciple of Emerson; he has since joined the ranks of America's most respected and beloved writers. Few, however, really know the complexity of the man they revere—wanderer and scholar, naturalist and humorist, teacher and surveyor, abolitionist and poet, Transcendentalist and anthropologist, inventor and social critic, and, above all, individualist. In this widely acclaimed biography, the eminent Thoreau scholar Walter Harding presents all of these Thoreaus. Scholars will find here the culmination of a lifetime of research and study, meticulously documented, while general readers will find an absorbing story of a remarkable man. Writing with supreme lucidity, Harding has marshaled all the facts so as best to “let them speak for themselves.” Thoreau’s thoughtfulness and stubbornness, his more than ordinarily human amalgam of the earthy and sublime, his unquenchable vitality emerge to the reader as they did to his own family, friends, and critics. The new afterword evaluates new scholarship about Thoreau. Originally published in 1982. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The Days of Henry Thoreau

The Days of Henry Thoreau PDF Author: Walter Harding
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400875560
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 535

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Book Description
Henry David Thoreau is generally remembered as the author of Walden and "Civil Disobedience," a recluse of the woods and a political protester who once went to jail. To his contemporaries he was a minor disciple of Emerson; he has since joined the ranks of America's most respected and beloved writers. Few, however, really know the complexity of the man they revere—wanderer and scholar, naturalist and humorist, teacher and surveyor, abolitionist and poet, Transcendentalist and anthropologist, inventor and social critic, and, above all, individualist. In this widely acclaimed biography, the eminent Thoreau scholar Walter Harding presents all of these Thoreaus. Scholars will find here the culmination of a lifetime of research and study, meticulously documented, while general readers will find an absorbing story of a remarkable man. Writing with supreme lucidity, Harding has marshaled all the facts so as best to “let them speak for themselves.” Thoreau’s thoughtfulness and stubbornness, his more than ordinarily human amalgam of the earthy and sublime, his unquenchable vitality emerge to the reader as they did to his own family, friends, and critics. The new afterword evaluates new scholarship about Thoreau. Originally published in 1982. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau PDF Author: Laura Dassow Walls
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022634469X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 668

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Book Description
"[The author] traces the full arc of Thoreau’s life, from his early days in the intellectual hothouse of Concord, when the American experiment still felt fresh and precarious, and 'America was a family affair, earned by one generation and about to pass to the next.' By the time he died in 1862, at only forty-four years of age, Thoreau had witnessed the transformation of his world from a community of farmers and artisans into a bustling, interconnected commercial nation. What did that portend for the contemplative individual and abundant, wild nature that Thoreau celebrated? Drawing on Thoreau’s copious writings, published and unpublished, [the author] presents a Thoreau vigorously alive in all his quirks and contradictions: the young man shattered by the sudden death of his brother; the ambitious Harvard College student; the ecstatic visionary who closed Walden with an account of the regenerative power of the Cosmos. We meet the man whose belief in human freedom and the value of labor made him an uncompromising abolitionist; the solitary walker who found society in nature, but also found his own nature in the society of which he was a deeply interwoven part. And, running through it all, Thoreau the passionate naturalist, who, long before the age of environmentalism, saw tragedy for future generations in the human heedlessness around him."--

The Days of Henry Thoreau. (Fifth Printing.) [With Plates, Including Portraits.].

The Days of Henry Thoreau. (Fifth Printing.) [With Plates, Including Portraits.]. PDF Author: Walter Harding
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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The Adventures of Henry Thoreau

The Adventures of Henry Thoreau PDF Author: Michael Sims
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408838230
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
From Mahatma Gandhi and John F. Kennedy to Martin Luther King and Leo Tolstoy, the works of Henry David Thoreau – author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, surveyor, schoolteacher, engineer – have long been an inspiration to many. But who was the unsophisticated young man who in 1837 became a protégé of Ralph Waldo Emerson? The Adventures of Henry Thoreau tells the colourful story of a complex man seeking a meaningful life in a tempestuous era. In rich, evocative prose Michael Sims brings to life the insecure, youthful Henry, as he embarks on the path to becoming the literary icon Thoreau. Using the letters and diaries of Thoreau's family, friends and students, Michael Sims charts his coming of age within a family struggling to rise above poverty in 1830s America. From skating and boating with Nathaniel Hawthorne, to travels with his brother, John Thoreau, and the launching of their progressive school, Sims paints a vivid portrait of the young writer struggling to find his voice through communing with nature, whether mountain climbing in Maine or building his life-changing cabin at Walden Pond. He explores Thoreau's infatuation with the beautiful young woman who rejected his proposal of marriage, the influence of his mother and sisters – who were passionate abolitionists – and that of the powerful cultural currents of the day. With emotion and texture, The Adventures of Henry Thoreau sheds fresh light on one of the most iconic figures in American history.

The Days of Henry Thoreau

The Days of Henry Thoreau PDF Author: Walter Harding
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Authors, American
Languages : en
Pages : 538

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A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers PDF Author: Henry David Thoreau
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Concord River
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description


Expect Great Things

Expect Great Things PDF Author: Kevin Dann
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0399184678
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
Now in paperback, this thrilling, meticulous biography by naturalist and historian Kevin Dann fills a gap in our understanding of Henry Thoreau, one modern history's most important spiritual visionaries by capturing the full arc of his life as a mystic, spiritual seeker, and explorer in transcendental realms. This acclaimed, epic biography of Henry David Thoreau sees Thoreau's world as the mystic himself saw it: filled with wonder and mystery; Native American myths and lore; wood sylphs, nature spirits, and fairies; battles between good and evil; and heroic struggles to live as a natural being in an increasingly synthetic world. Above all, Expect Great Things critically and authoritatively captures Thoreau's simultaneously wild and intellectually keen sense of the mystical, mythical, and supernatural. Other historians have skipped past or undervalued these aspects of Thoreau's life. In this groundbreaking work, historian and naturalist Kevin Dann restores Thoreau's esoteric visions and explorations to their rightful place as keystones of the man himself.

Thoreau and the Art of Life

Thoreau and the Art of Life PDF Author: Henry David Thoreau
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
ISBN: 1556438834
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 121

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Book Description
Featuring nearly 100 luminous watercolor illustrations, Thoreau and the Art of Life collects eloquent passages from the writings of the seminal author and philosopher. Drawn mainly from his journals, the short excerpts provide fascinating insight into his thought processes by presenting his raw, unedited feelings about the things that meant the most to him. The book reflects Thoreau’s deep beliefs and ideas about nature, relationships, creativity, spirituality, aging, simplicity, and wisdom. By eloquently expressing his thoughts about life and what gives it value, he leads the reader to a closer examination of life. Thoreau’s work asks us to live our own truths with joy and discipline and to recognize that we live in a universe of extraordinary beauty, mystery, and wonder. An avid reader of Thoreau, editor and illustrator Roderick MacIver organized the passages by themes: love and friendship; art, creativity, and writing; aging, disease, and death; human society and culture; nature and the human connection to the natural world; and wisdom, truth, solitude, and simplicity. The book includes a chronology and brief biography. Thoreau’s words of wisdom combined with MacIver’s vivid illustrations of the American landscape will resonate with nature enthusiasts and a broad range of readers interested in art, environmentalism, literature, and philosophy. “It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful, but it is more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.” —Henry David Thoreau

The Daily Henry David Thoreau

The Daily Henry David Thoreau PDF Author: Henry David Thoreau
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022662501X
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
“The sage of Walden Pond is himself in the mix with a quote-a-day compendium from Thoreau biographer Laura Dassow Walls of some of his best observations.” —Wall Street Journal “Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of each.” Modernity rules our lives by clock and calendar, dividing the stream of time into units. Henry David Thoreau subverted both clock and calendar, using them not to regulate time’s passing but to open up and explore its presence. This volume embodies Thoreau’s own ambition to “live in season” —to turn with the living sundial of the world, and, by attuning ourselves to nature. Ralph Waldo Emerson noted with awe that from flowers alone, Thoreau could tell the calendar date within two days; children remembered long into adulthood how Thoreau showed them white waterlilies awakening not by the face of a clock but at the first touch of the sun. As Thoreau wrote in Walden, “Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is.” Drawn from the full range of Thoreau’s journals and published writings, and arranged according to season, The Daily Henry David Thoreau allows us to discover the endless variation to be found in the repetitions of mundane cycles. Thoreau saw in the kernel of each day an earth enchanted, one he honed into sentences tuned with an artist’s eye and a musician’s ear. Thoreau’s world lives on in his writing so that we, too, may discover, even in a fallen world, a beauty worth defending.

Thoreau in His Own Time

Thoreau in His Own Time PDF Author: Sandra Harbert Petrulionis
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
ISBN: 1609380878
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
The forty-nine recollections gathered in Thoreau in His Own Time demonstrate that it was those who knew him personally, rather than his contemporary literati, who most prized Thoreau's message, but even those who disparaged him respected his unabashed example of an unconventional life. Included are comments by Ralph Waldo Emerson--friend, mentor, Walden landlord, and progenitor of the spin on Thoreau's posthumous reputation; Nathaniel Hawthorne, who could not compliment Thoreau without simultaneously denigrating him; and John Weiss, whose extended commentary on Thoreau's spirituality reflects unusual tolerance. Selections from the correspondence of Caroline Healey Dall, Maria Thoreau, Sophia Hawthorne, Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley, and Amanda Mather amplify our understanding of the ways in which nineteenth-century women viewed Thoreau. An excerpt by John Burroughs, who alternately honored and condemned Thoreau, asserts his view that Thoreau was ever searching for the unattainable.