* Illustrated with the original images. * Annotated with concise introduction, including analysis of Henry David Thoreau's works as well as modern view on Henry David Thoreau's historical background. * Original footnotes are hyperlinked for easy reference. * The collection includes alphabetical and chronological indexes of Henry David Thoreau's works. * Each book features its own active Table of Contents. * Includes alphabetical index of Thoreau's poems with hyperlinks to the works. * Includes Thoreau's Familiar Letters and Journal 1837-1861. * Includes Thoreau's Translations. * Includes Henry David Thoreau's Biography. * Includes Henry David Thoreau's most famous quotes. * Includes analysis of Henry David Thoreau's literary style. * All Annotated Classics books are beautifully designed for easy reading and navigation on e-Readers and mobile devices.
CONTENTS:
BOOKS: Cape Cod The Maine Woods Canoeing in the Wilderness Walden A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers An Excursion to Canada / A Yankee in Canada
MAJOR ESSAYS: Excursions - Natural History of Massachusetts - A Walk to Wachusett - The Landlord - A Winter Walk - The Succession of Forest Trees - Walking - Autumnal Tints - Wild Apples - Night and Moonlight Life Without Principle On the Duty of Civil Disobedience Slavery in Massachusetts
OTHER ESSAYS: Aulus Persius Flaccus Dark Ages Herald of Freedom The Highland Light Night and Moonlight Paradise (to be) Regained A Plea for Captain John Brown The Martyrdom of John Brown / After the Death of John Brown The Last Days of John Brown Reform and the Reformers The Service Sir Walter Raleigh Thomas Carlyle and His Works Wendell Phillips Before the Concord Lyceum
TRANSLATIONS: Prometheus Bound of Æschylus Translations from Pindar
BIOGRAPHY & HISTORICAL BACKGROUND: Biography Chronological order Henry D. Thoreau by Elbert Hubbard Thoreau by Ralph Waldo Emerson Henry David Thoreau: his Character and Opinions by Robert Louis Stevenson From Nathaniel Hawthorne's Journal, September 1, 1842 Another Word on Thoreau by John Burroughs Thoreau by Charles Ives
QUOTES & ANALYSIS: Quotes Civil Disobedience A Plea for Captain John Brown Reform and the Reformers Thomas Carlyle and His Works Walden A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers Transcendentalism In New England: A History by Octavius Brooks Frothingham
Henry David Thoreau (born David Henry Thoreau) was an American author, naturalist, transcendentalist, tax resister, development critic, philosopher, and abolitionist who is best known for Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.
Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions were his writings on natural history and philosophy, where he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern day environmentalism.
In 1817, Henry David Thoreau was born in Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard University in 1837, taught briefly, then turned to writing and lecturing. Becoming a Transcendentalist and good friend of Emerson, Thoreau lived the life of simplicity he advocated in his writings. His two-year experience in a hut in Walden, on land owned by Emerson, resulted in the classic, Walden: Life in the Woods (1854). During his sojourn there, Thoreau refused to pay a poll tax in protest of slavery and the Mexican war, for which he was jailed overnight. His activist convictions were expressed in the groundbreaking On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1849). In a diary he noted his disapproval of attempts to convert the Algonquins "from their own superstitions to new ones." In a journal he noted dryly that it is appropriate for a church to be the ugliest building in a village, "because it is the one in which human nature stoops to the lowest and is the most disgraced." (Cited by James A. Haught in 2000 Years of Disbelief.) When Parker Pillsbury sought to talk about religion with Thoreau as he was dying from tuberculosis, Thoreau replied: "One world at a time."
Thoreau's philosophy of nonviolent resistance influenced the political thoughts and actions of such later figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. D. 1862.
I read this to correspond to another reading challenge. It covers all of Thoreau's writing on natural history, including Walden. It was interesting to read Thoreau's thoughts on nature and life in general. He definitely doesn't feel like people need much to survive and we should use as little as possible to leave nature alone as much as possible. Much written here we still need to learn from.
I bit off more than I could chew. I have abandoned this goal, because there are just too many other books that I must read so I cannot dedicate myself to Thoreau at present. I like him, but I don't have to read anymore at the present.
Did some re-reading and skimming for our trip to Walden Pond: portions of Walden, Autumnal Tints, Wild Apples, and maybe a few other essays. Mixed feelings. I often find myself arguing with both Thoreau and Emerson as I read. 😅 Some nice, galvanizing quotes, though.