Henry David Thoreau

`The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation' In 1845 Henry David Thoreau left his home town of Concord, Massachusetts to begin a new life alone, in a rough hut he built himself a mile and a half away on the north-west shore of Walden Pond. Walden is Thoreau's classic autobiographical account of this experiment in solitary living, his refusal to play by the rules of hard work and the accumulation of wealth and above all the freedom it gave him to adapt his living to the natural world around him. This new edition of Walden traces the sources of Thoreau's reading and thinking and considers the author in the context of his birthplace and his sense of its history - social, economic and natural. In addition, an ecological appendix provides modern identifications of the myriad plants and animals to which Thoreau gave increasingly close attention as he became acclimatized to his life in the woods by Walden Pond. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

For the first time, Henry David Thoreau's unpublished Indian notebooks will be available. This, the second in a series of eleven notebooks, will comprise a complete set of Thoreau's collected extracts from his extensive reading of North America's cultural anthropology. "Everywhere in our corn and grain fields the earth is strewn with the relics of a race, which has vanished as completely as if trodden in with the earth- When I meditate on the destiny of this prosperous branch of the Saxon family, and the exhausted energies of this new country-I forget that what is now Concord was once Musketaquid, And that the American race has had its history- The future reader of history will associate his generation with the red man in his thoughts, and give it credit for some sympathy with that race." Henry David Thoreau Journal, Fall 1842

Während 'Walden' und der berühmte Essay 'Über die Pflicht zum Ungehorsam gegen den Staat' auf Deutsch vorliegen, sind die übrigen Essays und die Tagebücher hierzulande nahezu unbekannt. Thoreau hat Tausende Seiten an Tagebucheinträgen hinterlassen, in denen er botanische, zoo-logische und meteorologische Beobachtungen notierte, archäologische Funde und was ihm sonst bei seinen Streifzügen durch die Natur auf- und einfallen mochte. Neben weit ausgreifenden Reflexionen von verblüffender Originalität finden sich Aper?us, neben gesellschaftskritischen Betrachtungen liebevoll detaillierte Beschreibungen. Diese Auswahl vermittelt einen lebendigen Eindruck von einer der eigenwilligsten Gestalten der amerikanischen Literatur.

"Walden" is an account of the two years and two months that David Henry Thoreau lived on the shores of Walden Pond, supporting himself by the labor of his own hands. In conducting this natural experiment in simple living, Thoreau hoped to discover what was essential to life. In this book, he says: "I went to the woods because I wanted to take a good look at life. I wanted to learn what life had to teach. What I didn't want was to discover, just before I died, that I hadn't lived at all. I did not want to live what is" not "life, for life is too precious. And I didn't want to just" accept" life, unless it was absolutely necessary. I wanted to live deeply, see into the heart of things. I wanted to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms. If life turned out to be ugly, then I wanted to see it as such and tell the world about it. If life were sublime, then I wanted to know all its wonders through personal experience, and give a true account of it.""Walden" is a revolutionary book, calling into question the very principles of modern society. It challenges the reader to reconsider the foundations of his or her life. The present version is a retelling of the first two chapters of the original. Part of the "Classics Retold to be Read, Not just Revered" series, this retelling of the first two chapters of "Walden" has been undertaken to make the book more widely accessible -- without diluting its intellectual content -- for both emerging adults seeking broader perspectives and intellectually curious older readers. The text is set in a slightly larger typeface for easier reading. The AuthorHenry David Thoreau (1817-62) was a philosopher, naturalist, and abolitionist. He is considered the father of modern environmentalism. In 1846 he spent a night in jail for refusing to pay taxes to a government that permitted slavery. This experience led to his writing "Civil Disobedience," which called for individual resistance to immoral government, and which influenced the thinking of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and others.

As a unique feature, the Third Edition includes generous excerpts from Thoreau's journal, reprinted by special arrangements with Princeton University Press from the definitive edition of his writings. Spanning the years 1845-54, these selections vividly display Thoreau's intensive exploration of his local landscape; the fusion of literary and natural history field work that informs Walden, "Walking," and "Wild Apples"; and the growth of his environmental imagination. “Reviews and Posthumous Assessments” for this edition collects eight new reviews of Thoreau's antislavery and late environmental essays as well as of Walden. To the influential portraits of Thoreau by Ralph Waldo Emerson and James Russell Lowell, the Third Edition adds John Burroughs's "Another Word on Thoreau," his response to them and to his great predecessor. ”Recent Criticism” includes eighteen selections of the best historical, political, philosophical, poststructuralist, and environmental criticism of Thoreau's writing since the mid-twentieth century. To classic pieces by E. B. White, Leo Marx, Barbara Johnson, and Stanley Cavell, the Third Edition adds essays by nine new contributors, among them Laurence Buell, Laura Dassow Walls, Evan Carton, Robert A. Gross, Albert J. von Frank, Steven Fink, and William Rossi. A Chronology of Thoreau's life and work, new to the Third Edition, and an expanded and updated Selected Bibliography are also included.