Walden

Henry David Thoreau is considered one of the leading figures in early American literature, and Walden is without doubt his most influential book. Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful hardbacks make perfect gifts for book lovers, or wonderful additions to your own collection. This edition includes a new afterword by Sam Gilpin.Walden recounts the author's experiences living in a small house in the woods around Walden Pond near Concord in Massachusetts. Thoreau constructed the house himself, with the help of a few friends, to see if he could live 'deliberately' - independently and apart from society. The result is an intriguing work which blends natural history with philosophical insights, and includes many illuminating quotations from other authors. Thoreau's wooden shack has won a place for itself in the collective American psyche, a remarkable achievement for a book with such modest and rustic beginnings.

"Walden is a self-help book, perhaps the ultimate self-help book, urging us to show up for our own lives, to have the courage to find our own convictions and to try to live them out. . . . [Thoreau is] a writer of immense humanity, vitality and humor. . . . One hundred fifty years after its publication, Walden also remains a practical, usable manual on how to lead a good, and just life. . . . At its core, Walden is about the project of personal freedom, self-emancipation, which is where all pursuits of freedom must start."--Robert D. Richardson, "Smithsonian Magazine", "Each [volume] is preceded by a substantive, lively and idiosyncratic essay. . . . Together, the essays are a mini-course in Thoreau and the trends he launched in American thought."--Nancy Szokan, "Washington Post Book World"

Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1817, and attended Concord Academy and Harvard. After a short time spent as a teacher, he worked as a surveyor and a handyman, sometimes employed by Ralph Waldo Emerson. From 1845-1847 Thoreau lived in a house he had made himself on Emerson's property near Walden Pond. During this period he completed A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and wrote the first draft of Walden, the book considered his masterpiece. Thoreau died of tuberculosis in 1862, and much of his writing was published posthumously.

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