A transcendentalist classic on social responsibility and a manifesto that inspired modern protest movements

Critical of 19th-century America's booming commercialism and industrialism, Henry David Thoreau moved to a small cabin in the woods of Concord, Massachusetts in 1845. Walden, the account of his stay near Walden Pond, conveys at once a naturalist's wonder at the commonplace and a transcendentalist's yearning for spiritual truth and self-reliance. But Thoreau's embrace of solitude and simplicity did not entail a withdrawal from social and political matters. Civil Disobedience, also included in this volume, expresses his antislavery and antiwar sentiments, and has influenced resistance movements worldwide. Both give rewarding insight into a free-minded, principled and idiosyncratic life.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,800 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Walden and Civil Disobedience - Henry David Thoreau Introduction by Michael Meyer

Suggestions for Further Reading
A Note on the Texts
Walden
Economy
Where I Lived, and What I Lived For
Reading
Sounds
Solitude
Visitors
The Bean-Field
The Village
The Ponds
Baker Farm
Higher Laws
Brute Neighbors
House-Warming
Former Inhabitants; and Winter Visitors
Winter Animals
The Pond in Winter
Spring
Conclusion
"Civil Disobedience"
Notes for Walden
Notes for "Civil Disobedience"

Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts in 1817. He graduated from Harvard in 1837, the same year he began his lifelong Journal. Inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau became a key member of the Transcendentalist movement that included Margaret Fuller and Bronson Alcott. The Transcendentalists' faith in nature was tested by Thoreau between 1845 and 1847 when he lived for twenty-six months in a homemade hut at Walden Pond. While living at Walden, Thoreau worked on the two books published during his lifetime: Walden (1854) and A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849). Several of his other works, including The Maine Woods, Cape Cod, and Excursions, were published posthumously. Thoreau died in Concord, at the age of forty-four, in 1862.
Kristen Case teaches at the University of Maine at Farmington, where she is associate professor of English. She is the author of American Pragmatism and Poetic Practice: Crosscurrents from Emerson  to Susan Howe (Camden  House, 2011) and Little Arias, a collection  of poems (New Issues Press, 2015). She is coeditor of Thoreau at 200: Essays and Reassessments (Cambridge University Press, 2016) and has published articles on Thoreau, Ezra Pound, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, and  William James. She lives inTemple, Maine.