Interesting facts about Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading transcendentalist, he is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay "Civil Disobedience" (originally published as "Resistance to Civil Government"), an argument for disobedience to an unjust state.

Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry amount to more than 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions are his writings on natural history and philosophy, in which he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern-day environmentalism.

His literary style interweaves close observation of nature, personal experience, pointed rhetoric, symbolic meanings, and historical lore, while displaying a poetic sensibility, philosophical austerity, and attention to practical detail. He was also deeply interested in the idea of survival in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay; at the same time he advocated abandoning waste and illusion in order to discover life's true essential needs.

Thoreau was a lifelong abolitionist, delivering lectures that attacked the fugitive slave law while praising the writings of Wendell Phillips and defending the abolitionist John Brown. 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.

#audiobook #audiobooks #freeaudiobooks #classicmasterworks #Thoreau

[michakuiper]

He started calling himself Henry David, because everyone always called him Henry. This was because his uncle was called David too, so it was probably confusing to have two Davids in the family. So the youngest David became Henry.

In the 1800s, the family name was pronounced THOR-oh (according to his aunt). Stress on the THOR part, and it never sounded like "THUR" like it does today in modern pronunciation.
Emerson described the pronunciation as "THO-row", again with stress on the first syllable, so basically the same sound as "THOR-oh". He definitely never called himself "Thurooh" and I'm pretty sure he would've written an essay about it if anyone else ever called him that.

[Backwoodsandblades]

The tax was actually paid that day, but the jailer thought Thoreau should spend the night in jail, and couldn't be bothered to go let him out that evening.