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This is one of the resource pages for Magnetic North's forthcoming production of Walden. Here you'll be able to find out more about the original book, follow the progress of the adaptation on the Walden blog and sign up for regular updates on the production's progress. |
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Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts, in July 1817. As a boy Thoreau developed an early love of solitude and nature. He graduated from Harvard in 1837, and worked as a schoolteacher and tutor. He took over the management of Concord Academy in 1838 and introduced Bronson Alcott's progressive principles of education where physical punishments were abandoned and pupils were encouraged to participate in classroom discussion. In 1839, a canoe trip convinced Thoreau that he should not pursue a schoolteacher's career but should instead aim to become established as a poet of nature. From 1841 to 1843 Thoreau lived in the home of the essayist and transcendental philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. During this time Thoreau contributed as a gardener and handyman but also had access to Emerson's library and opinions. This library included works on German, English, French, Indian and Chinese philosophy as well as classical and English literature. Through his connection with Emerson and New England Transcendentalism, through lectures in the Concord Lyceum and through articles in The Dial Thoreau met other transcendentalists such as Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne and George Ripley. Thoreau felt that he needed time and space to apply himself as a writer and on July 4th 1845 he moved to a hut that he had built himself using second-hand materials, on land recently purchased by Emerson alongside the northern shore of Walden Pond. He lived there until September 1847, writing about the experience in Walden, published in 1854. Walden has been translated into some fifty languages and is said to have been an inspiration to Tolstoy, Gandhi and Martin Luther King among others, besides being an inspiration for environmentalism across the world. While living at Walden, he was arrested for non-payment of the poll tax, which was associated with the Mexican-American War to which Thoreau was opposed. He spent a night in jail but was released the next day after a relative paid what was owed. Thoreau clarified his position in perhaps his most famous essay, Civil Disobedience (1849), now widely referred to by its original title, Resistance to Civil Government. In this essay, Thoreau discussed passive resistance as a method of protest. The essay drew heavily on a belief in the reliability of the human conscience that was a fundamental Transcendentalist principle. This belief was based on a conviction of the immanence, or in-dwelling, of God in the soul of the individual. Thoreau was deeply affected by the death from tetanus of his older brother John in 1842. He set out to write a work in memory of his brother by attempting to set down something of their experiences in their canoe trip of 1839. This work, titled A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, became Thoreau's first published full-length work in 1849. Thoreau again lived in Emerson's house after he left Walden in September 1847. He also became more fully involved in the Thoreau family business of lead pencil manufacture. Thoreau pencils were very highly regarded for their quality. Thoreau spent the years from 1849 with his parents and sister in Concord. With the introduction of electrotyping printing processes in the 1850s, the Thoreau family business diversified into supplying raw materials for this trade. Thoreau eventually ran the company after his father's death in 1859 but his involvement in the sometimes dusty production of lead pencils did serious damage to his lungs. The major portion of Thoreau's time was however devoted to study, meditation and conversation. Although he had little involvement in politics, Thoreau supported the abolitionist cause and delivered several lectures in opposition to the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law. It is thought that Thoreau helped several fugitive slaves by hiding them in the family home, and then organising relocation to Canada. In October 1859, after the abolitionist Captain John Brown raided the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Thoreau spoke in defence of Brown's character - the first person in America to do so. His essay "A Plea for Capt. John Brown" was published and widely circulated in The New York Tribune. Thoreau was only forty five years old when he died from tuberculosis in 1862. His remains are buried in the family plot in Sleepy Hollow cemetery in Concord. |
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