Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862) Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister,development critic, surveyor and historian and a leading Transcendentalist. Thoreau is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings and his essay Resistance to Civil Government. (Also known as Civil Disobedience). Thoreau's philosophy of Civil Disobedience later influenced the political thoughts and actions of such notable figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. Thoreau had taken up a version of P. B. Shelley's principle in the political poem The Mask of Anarchy(1819). In 1854, he would publish as Walden or Life in the Woods recounting the 2 years, 2 months and 2 days that he had spent at Walden Pond. He was influenced by Indian Spiritual thought. Robert Frost wrote of Thoreau, “In one book...he surpasses everything we have had in America”. Mahatma Gandhi