Henry David Thoreau: A Biography

Pamphlets on American Writers #90

by Franklin Benjamin Sanborn

“This first-hand acquaintance with Thoreau and his friends lends an authority to Sanborn's writings, and… he was able to put into print many details of Thoreau's life that would otherwise have been lost.” — Walter Harding, A Thoreau Handbook

“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.”

This personal biography is a great insight into the life of a great man. Journalist, abolitionist, philosopher, and poet, Henry David Thoreau lived a fascinating life surrounded by great figures, including Ralph Waldo Emerson.

As a lifelong abolitionist, Thoreau delivered many lectures that attacked the Fugitive Slave law. His most famous work, Civil Disobedience, has been the basis of many protest movements all around the world, influencing the political manifestos of figures like Leo Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr.

Frank B. Sanborn’s biography is informal and affectionate, coming from a man who knew Thoreau and moved in his circles. It relies not on Thoreau’s reputation, but on the words of his friends, family, and Thoreau’s own personal letters.

This biography is a chance for readers to get an idea of the man behind the myth, perhaps more than any academic biography could. Far from the dry accounts of his life, Sanborn’s Henry David Thoreau is a biography with heart.

Frank B. Sanborn (1831 –1917) was an American journalist, author, and reformer. A memorialist of American transcendentalism, Sanborn wrote early biographies of many of the movement's key figures.

Genres: Biography

209 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1882

About the author

Franklin Benjamin Sanborn (December 15, 1831 – February 24, 1917) was an American journalist, author, and reformer. Sanborn was a social scientist, and a memorialist of American transcendentalism who wrote early biographies of many of the movement's key figures. He founded the American Social Science Association, in 1865, "to treat wisely the great social problems of the day". He was a member of the Secret Six, or "Committee of Six", which funded the militant abolitionist John Brown.

Reviews

[Illiterate · Rating 2 out of 5]

Affectionate contemporaneous biography. The most interesting chapter inadvertently highlights a priggish Puritanism dating back to Thoreau’s college essays.

[Debbie De steno · Rating 3 out of 5]

I guess I am among many who have romanticized Mr. Thoreau and his book Walden but Leon Edel has made sure to stop that nonsense right away. This is a quick read and although Mr. Thoreau isn't the perfect guy who truly lives in the woods, all I can picture, is a man/boy with a smirk on his face saying, "I didn't do it" clearly holding the baseball bat and glove while looking at the broken window.

[Matt Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sanborn was one of John Brown’s financial backers, and the person who introduced Brown to Thoreau when the former was on a fundraising trip through Concord, MA. Sanborn was a personal friend of Thoreau’s from his days at college, and that is what makes this biography unique — it is a limitation as well as a gift. This reads more like a memoir than a strict biography, and there is a stark informality to the whole thing, which is, oddly enough, rather enjoyable to read. You know that the author knew the man, and that provides fascinating context.

[Amberly Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book but my god is HDT pathetic.

[Sparrow .]

I’d never read a biography from 1893. Are they all this chaotic? Even the title is slightly vertiginous. No one says “Henry D. Thoreau” anymore.

Sanborn was a bit player in the Transcendentalist saga, a schoolteacher at the progressive school in Thoreau’s town, and he threatens to sink the book under mountains of Concord trivia – for example:

Duncan Ingraham, a retired sea-captain, who had enriched himself in the Surinam trade, long lived in Concord, before and after the Revolution, and one of his grandchildren was Captain Marryatt, the English novelist; another was the American naval captain, Ingraham, who brought away Martin Kosta, a Hungarian refugee, from the clutches of the Austrian government.

But he knew Henry David, which counts for a lot in the life-story business. For example, he admits that Thoreau was prideful:

“… it was a wild stock of pride,” as Burke said of Lord Keppel, “on which the tenderest of all hearts had grafted the milder virtues.”

(This book is from the American Men of Letters series, which includes Ralph Waldo Emerson by Oliver Wendell Holmes, and the mystifying William Gilmore Simms by William P. Trent – plus the biography of a woman, Margaret Fuller Ossoli by Thomas Wentworth Higginson!)

[Ken Moskowitz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was surprised that this book by a Thoreau contemporary and acquaintance is not that good, at least not by modern standards. Large tracts of it are extensive quotes from letters or books of Thoreau's contemporaries, some with minimal relevance to Thoreau's life. We learn little of the great man's daily life or activities, though Sanborn apparently thought such details were not important.

For any who entertain the notion, consistent with our contemporary tendency to dethrone dead white men, s/he might read the huge praises that poured on this unique and timeless genius. For example, a letter from his sister Sophia after Henry died at age 44, in May, 1862.

“Profound joy mingles with my grief. I feel as if something very beautiful had happened, – not death. Although Henry is with us no longer, yet the memory of his sweet and virtuous soul must ever cheer and comfort me. My heart is filled with praise to God for the gift of such a brother, and may I never distrust the love and wisdom of Him who made him, and who has now called him to labor in more glorious fields than earth affords!"

[Andrea Greene Myers]

Written by someone who actually knew him and actually has reprints of his college papers!! One of the best bios...