Synopses & Reviews
Walden is Thoreau's classic autobiographical account of his 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 traces the sources of Thoreau's reading and thinking and considers the author in the context of his birthplace and sense of history--social, economic, and natural. An ecological appendix provides modern identifications of the myriad plants and animals to which he gave close attention as he became acclimated to his life in the woods by Walden Pond.
About the Author
Stephen Allen Fender is Professor of American Studies and Director of the Graduate Research Centre in the Humanities, School of English and American Studies at the University of Sussex. His books include
Plotting the Golden West: American Literature and the Rhetoric of the California Trail and
Sea Changes: British Emigration and American Literature.
Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts in 1817 and is known for his extreme individualism, his preference for simple, austere living, and revolt against the demands of society and government. His other works are A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849), Civil Disobedience (1849), Excursions, (1863) and The Maine Woods (1864).