Henry David Thoreau was a leading figure in the American Transcendentalist movement and the era of US literary emergence. He achieved worldwide renown as an essayist, social thinker, naturalist, environmentalist, and sage.
Thoreau’s Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854), an autobiographical narrative of his two-year sojourn in a self-built lakeside cabin, is one of the most widely studied works of American literature.
It has generated scores of literary imitations and thousands of neo-Walden experiments in back-to-basics living, both rural and urban. Thoreau’s essay, “Civil Disobedience,” is a classic of American political activism and a model for nonviolent reform movements around the world.
Thoreau also stands as an icon of modern American environmentalism, the father of American nature writing, a forerunner of modern ecology, and a harbinger of individual spirituality incorporating Eastern wisdom and philosophy.
However, Thoreau is also a controversial figure. Scholars have regularly offered conflicting assessments of the significance of his work, the evolution of his thought, even the facts of his life.
Some disagreements are in the eye of the beholder, but many follow from challenges posed by his own cross-grained idiosyncrasies. He was an advocate for individual self-sufficiency who never broke away from home, a self-professed mystic now also acclaimed as a pioneer natural and applied scientist, and a seminal theorist of nonviolent protest who defended the most notorious guerrilla fighter of his day, John Brown.
All told, he remains a rather enigmatic figure both despite and because we know so much about him, beginning with the two-million-word journal he kept throughout his adult life.
Thoreau scholar Lawrence Buell gives due consideration to all these aspects of Thoreau’s art and thought, framing key issues and complexities in historical and literary context in his book Henry David Thoreau: Thinking Disobediently (Oxford University Press, 2023).
Lawrence Buell is Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature Emeritus at Harvard University. Considered one of the founders of the ecocriticism movement, he has written and lectured worldwide on Transcendentalism, American studies, and the environmental humanities. He is the author of many books, including Literary Transcendentalism, The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Invention of American Culture, Writing for an Endangered World, and Emerson.
The Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS) will host Lawrence Buell for a talk about his book on Wednesday, September 27, 2023, from 6 to 7 pm at the Historical Society in Boston and virtually.
This event is free for MHS Members and just $10 per person to attend the event. There is no charge for virtual attendees or Card to Culture participants (EBT, WIC, and ConnectorCare). The in-person reception starts at 5:30 and the program will begin at 6. You can register online here.
Book Purchases made through this Amazon link support the New York Almanack’s mission to report new publications relevant to New York State.
See more new books HERE.
Illustrations, from above: Henry David Thoreau: Thinking Disobediently; and the original title page of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden featuring a picture of his cabin drawn by Thoreau’s sister Sophia.
Thanks for publishing this well written piece on Thoreau and introducing readers to Lawrence Buell’s scholarly work about the man. As you suggest Thoreau has inspired countless numbers of us who became environmental educators and writers. His influence reveals itself in my books most notably in The ‘Tree’ of Us: Richford Boys Who Changed the World and What They Left Behind (2023).