American Transcendentalism · natural history · 1817–1862
Henry David Thoreau
Live deliberately; refuse what conscience condemns.
Concord · Walden Pond · Massachusetts
Reading guides
A thread to guide your reading.
Original introductions to enter the works, discover their central questions and take the reflection further.
Living deliberately at Walden
Follow the reckoning of needs, the daily routine and the turning seasons through which Walden tests what a human life really requires.
Walden; or, Life in the WoodsConscience and the law
Examine how the essay moves from one night in jail to an argument about complicity, majority rule and the duties of citizens toward an unjust state.
Civil DisobedienceTravel, friendship and mourning
Read the river journey as an elegy for John and as a workshop for the digressive essay form that Walden would later refine.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers