ISBN: 9780226344690

"While a large body of biographical studies has advanced our understanding of Thoreau, a work of literary biography that synthesizes this knowledge has long been overdue, one that reintro… Mehr…

"While a large body of biographical studies has advanced our understanding of Thoreau, a work of literary biography that synthesizes this knowledge has long been overdue, one that reintroduces us to Thoreau and changes the way we see him. The Nile on eBay   FREE SHIPPING UK WIDE   Henry David Thoreau by Laura Dassow Walls "Walden. Yesterday I came here to live." That entry from the journal of Henry David Thoreau, and the intellectual journey it began, would by themselves be enough to place Thoreau in the American pantheon. His attempt to "live deliberately" in a small woods at the edge of his hometown of Concord has been a touchstone for individualists and seekers since the publication of Walden in 1854.   But there was much more to Thoreau than his brief experiment in living at Walden Pond. A member of the vibrant intellectual circle centered on his neighbor Ralph Waldo Emerson, he was also an ardent naturalist, a manual laborer and inventor, a radical political activist, and more. Many books have taken up various aspects of Thoreau's character and achievements, but, as Laura Dassow Walls writes, "Thoreau has never been captured between covers; he was too quixotic, mischievous, many-sided." Two hundred years after his birth, and two generations after the last full-scale biography, Walls restores Henry David Thoreau to us in all his profound, inspiring complexity.   Walls traces the full arc of Thoreau's life, from his early days in the intellectual hothouse of Concord, when the American experiment still felt fresh and precarious, and "America was a family affair, earned by one generation and about to pass to the next." By the time he died in 1862, at only forty-four years of age, Thoreau had witnessed the transformation of his world from a community of farmers and artisans into a bustling, interconnected commercial nation. What did that portend for the contemplative individual and abundant, wild nature that Thoreau celebrated?   Drawing on Thoreau's copious writings, published and unpublished, Walls presents a Thoreau vigorously alive in all his quirks and contradictions: the young man shattered by the sudden death of his brother; the ambitious Harvard College student; the ecstatic visionary who closed Walden with an account of the regenerative power of the Cosmos. We meet the man whose belief in human freedom and the value of labor made him an uncompromising abolitionist; the solitary walker who found society in nature, but also found his own nature in the society of which he was a deeply interwoven part. And, running through it all, Thoreau the passionate naturalist, who, long before the age of environmentalism, saw tragedy for future generations in the human heedlessness around him.   "The Thoreau I sought was not in any book, so I wrote this one," says Walls. The result is a Thoreau unlike any seen since he walked the streets of Concord, a Thoreau for our time and all time.   FORMATHardcover LANGUAGEEnglish CONDITIONBrand New Author Biography Laura Dassow Walls is the William P. and Hazel B. White Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame. She lives in Granger, IN. Table of Contents Preface Introduction: Land of the Grass-Ground River Tahatawan's Arrowhead Enclosures and Commons The Genesis of Musketaquid The Coming of the English Living the Revolution Part I The Making of Thoreau Chapter 1 Concord Sons and Daughters Coming to Concord The Early Years of John and Cynthia Thoreau Making Concord Home Chapter 2 Higher Learning from Concord to Harvard (1826-1837) A Concord Education A Harvard Portrait Learning to Leave Harvard Chapter 3 Transcendental Apprentice (1837-1841) Sic Vita Transcendental Self-Culture Concord Social Culture The Thoreau School "There is no remedy for love but to love more" Compensations Chapter 4 "Not till We Are Lost" (1842-1844) The Death of John Thoreau "Surely joy is the condition of life!": New Friends, New Ventures Thoreau on Staten Island The Road to Walden Part II The Making of Walden Chapter 5 "Walden, Is It You?" (1845-1847) Preparations On Walden Pond: The First Season Going to Extremes I: Thoreau in Jail Going to Extremes II: Thoreau on Katahdin Leaving Walden Chapter 6 A Writer's Life (1847-1849) "Will you be my father?": Thoreau at the Emersons' "Lectures multiply on my desk": Thoreau Finds His Audience "Civil Disobedience" A Basket of Delicate Texture: Weaving Thoreau's Week Chapter 7 From Concord to Cosmos: Thoreau's Turn to Science (1849-1851) "The law which reveals": Cape Cod "Even this may be the year": 1850 "The captain of a huckleberry party" Chapter 8 The Beauty of Nature, the Baseness of Men (1852-1854) Abolition and Reform after the Fugitive Slave Law The Hermit at Home The Higher Law from Chesuncook to Walden Reading Walden Part III Successions Chapter 9 Walden-on-Main (1854-1857) "What Shall It Profit?": Thoreau after Walden Illness and Recovery "The infinite extent of our relations Chapter 10 Wild Fruits (1857-1859) The Last Excursions to Cape Cod and the Maine Woods Life in the Commons: Village, Mountain, River "A Transcendentalist above all": Thoreau and John Brown Chapter 11 A Constant New Creation (1860-1862) The Year of Darwin "The West of which I speak": Thoreau's Last Journey "The leaves teach us how to die" Acknowledgments Abbreviations Notes Bibliography Index Review "While a large body of biographical studies has advanced our understanding of Thoreau, a work of literary biography that synthesizes this knowledge has long been overdue, one that reintroduces us to Thoreau and changes the way we see him. This is the achievement of Henry David Thoreau: A Life by Laura Dassow Walls. In this vivid, perceptive portrait, Walls reconciles several decades' worth of scholarship into a new, authoritative biography that presents Thoreau in greater depth, clarity, and factual completeness. . . . Laura Dassow Walls has written what is sure to become the definitive biography of Henry David Thoreau."-- "The New England Quarterly""A superbly researched and written literary portrait that broadens our understanding of the great American writer and pre-eminent naturalist. . . . Magnificent. . . . A sympathetic and honest portrait that fully captures the private and public life of this singular American figure." -- "Kirkus Reviews, starred review""Exhaustive, exhilarating. . . . With a light touch and prose equal to her subject, she introduces us to a Thoreau we need right now: a scientist, a moralist, a radical democrat, and an artist who might stir us to realize the highest ideals of self and nation." -- "Hedgehog Review""Study the living being, not its dead shell. And this is precisely what Walls has done in her definitive life of this opinionated, often difficult, but always interesting writer. . . . To her great credit, Walls gives us so much more than the quotable Thoreau, the bane of the American literature survey course. . . . She immerses herself and her readers fully in Thoreau's environment, the fields, meadows, woods, and streets of Concord. Walls's book is, first and foremost, the product of an extraordinary act of empathy. But it is also an outstanding literary achievement. No biographer has more credibly evoked those blisteringly cold, crystal-clear New England winter days, days that, thanks to Walls's prose, sparkle, glimmer, and chill for us the way they once did for Thoreau. . . . The great imaginative accomplishment of Walls's book is to put Thoreau firmly back into the community that fostered and, for the most part, protected him." -- "Weekly Standard""As Laura Dassow Walls makes clear in her excellent Henry David Thoreau: A Life, he was a man of obsessively high principles, self-contained, a stickler for details who insisted on his own way of seeing the world, however quirky. . . . Walls earns her keep, digging into Thoreau's aphoristic letters and journals, finding acute reflections by his contemporaries, and drawing a wonderfully brisk and satisfying portrait. . ." --Jay Parini "Times Literary Supplement""I've always been slightly skeptical of biography doorstops. . . . I read the book in two sittings. It will not be used as a doorstop--ever. . . . Walls, scouring his published and unpublished writings, gives her readers hundreds of these fleeting chances to catch sight of a beautifully untamed but distinctly American existence. . . . Walls comes as close as any biographer has to giving us the wild Thoreau--disorienting and bewildering." --John Kaag "Chronicle of Higher Education""In this definitive biography, the many facets of Thoreau are captured with grace and scholarly rigor by English professor Walls. By convention, she observes, there were 'two Thoreaus, both of them hermits, yet radically at odds with each other. One speaks for nature; the other for social justice.' Not so here. To reveal the author of Walden as one coherent person is Walls's mission, which she fully achieves; as a result of her vigilant focus Thoreau holds the center--no mean achievement in a work through whose pages move the great figures and cataclysmic events of the period. Emerson, Hawthorne, and Whitman are here; so are Frederick Douglass and John Brown. Details of everyday life lend roundness to this portrait as we follow Thoreau's progress as a writer and also as a reader. Walls attends to the breadth of Thoreau's social and political involvements (notably his concern for Native Americans and Irish-Americans and his committed abolitionism) and the depth of his scientific pursuits. The wonder is that, giv, T.H.E. University of Chicago Press<

ISBN: 9780226344690

“Walden. Yesterday I came here to live.” That entry from the journal of Henry David Thoreau, and the intellectual journey it began, would by themselves be enough to place Thor… Mehr…

“Walden. Yesterday I came here to live.” That entry from the journal of Henry David Thoreau, and the intellectual journey it began, would by themselves be enough to place Thoreau in the American pantheon. His attempt to “live deliberately” in a small woods at the edge of his hometown of Concord has been a touchstone for individualists and seekers since the publication of Walden in 1854.   But there was much more to Thoreau than his brief experiment in living at Walden Pond. A member of the vibrant intellectual circle centered on his neighbor Ralph Waldo Emerson, he was also an ardent naturalist, a manual laborer and inventor, a radical political activist, and more. Many books have taken up various aspects of Thoreau’s character and achievements, but, as Laura Dassow Walls writes, “Thoreau has never been captured between covers; he was too quixotic, mischievous, many-sided.” Two hundred years after his birth, and two generations after the last full-scale biography, Walls restores Henry David Thoreau to us in all his profound, inspiring complexity.   Walls traces the full arc of Thoreau’s life, from his early days in the intellectual hothouse of Concord, when the American experiment still felt fresh and precarious, and “America was a family affair, earned by one generation and about to pass to the next.” By the time he died in 1862, at only forty-four years of age, Thoreau had witnessed the transformation of his world from a community of farmers and artisans into a bustling, interconnected commercial nation. What did that portend for the contemplative individual and abundant, wild nature that Thoreau celebrated?   Drawing on Thoreau’s copious writings, published and unpublished, Walls presents a Thoreau vigorously alive in all his quirks and contradictions: the young man shattered by the sudden death of his brother; the ambitious Harvard College student; the ecstatic visionary who closed Walden with an account of the regenerative power of the Cosmos. We meet the man whose belief in human freedom and the value of labor made him an uncompromising abolitionist; the solitary walker who found society in nature, but also found his own nature in the society of which he was a deeply interwoven part. And, running through it all, Thoreau the passionate naturalist, who, long before the age of environmentalism, saw tragedy for future generations in the human heedlessness around him.   “The Thoreau I sought was not in any book, so I wrote this one,” says Walls. The result is a Thoreau unlike any seen since he walked the streets of Concord, a Thoreau for our time and all time.   Trade Books>Hardcover>Biography>Literature Biog,Memoir>Literature Biog,Memoir, University of Chicago Press Core >2<