Who is thoreaus audience

From the desperate city you go into the desperate country and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. We are determined to be starved before we are hungry. I think that there are very few important communications made through it. To speak critically, I never received more than one or two letters in my life — I wrote this some years ago — that were worth the postage. Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search.

Press ESC to cancel. Ben Davis October 8, Who is the audience of reading by Henry David Thoreau? Thoreau himself was not so resigned when it came to expressing his opinions at Harvard, a school where most young Massachusetts men from respectable families studied.

He was forced to take a leave of absence from the school in because he was ill, probably with tuberculosis. Unlike his literary contemporaries in England, members of the Romantic movement, Thoreau was not to take the view of this illness, commonly known as consumption, from which he would eventually die as a metaphor for the creative fires that burned in and consumed young the life of an artist.

Thoreau returned to graduate with from Harvard with the Class of When offered a master's degree for only five dollars, with no requirement of study and the only condition being that he was alive three years later, Thoreau rejected and criticized the university's offer. Emerson, while studying theology in the s, became dissatisfied with the Unitarian religion, which had taken hold in Massachusetts.

Gradually, he came to see Unitarianism as conservative and rationalist, a way for businessmen to engage in a religion that had become more of a social gathering than a connection with the divine. In the early eighteenth century, the Unitarian and Congregationalist churches broke apart over doctrinal differences, including the Congregationalist emphasis on human sin and belief in the trinity.

William Ellery Channing, a Boston minister, preached an address about Unitarian Christianity in , crystallizing the Unitarian philosophy. In his Divinity School address and in his book Nature, published in , Emerson expressed what would become the tenets of the Transcendentalist movement.

He and the movement's other followers, the majority of whom were Unitarian ministers, formed the Transcendentalist Club. They believed that Unitarianism did not provide for every human being's need and ability to experience the divine. Believing that human beings should find truth within themselves, Emerson emphasizes self-reliance, in an essay of the same name, and understand God through reason. Emerson's presence in Concord led to the development of the town as an intellectual center.

Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife lived for a time at the Old Manse, beginning on July 8, , and Thoreau was known to dine with the couple as well as to plow and plant the Hawthornes' garden. The two remained close even after Hawthorne left Concord. Channing suggested to Thoreau that he build a hut by Walden Pond, and after Thoreau's death, wrote the first biography of him, published in Thoreau's adoption of Transcendentalist beliefs was reflected in both his writing about nature as well as his political views.

The Transcendentalists believed that though the world of the soul was paramount, it was necessary to recognize the truth and beauty of God's creation in the natural world. In his satirical Fable for Critics , for instance, poet and literary critic James Russell Lowell lampooned Thoreau in verse:.

There comes [Thoreau], for instance; to see him's rare sport, Tread in Emerson's tracks with legs painfully short; How he jumps, how he strains, and gets red in the face, To keep step with the mystagogue's natural pace! He follows as close as a stick to a rocket, His fingers exploring the prophet's each pocket. Fie, for shame, brother bard; with good fruit of your own, Can't you let Neighbor Emerson's orchards alone? Lowell did further damage after Thoreau's death with a piece published in the October issue of the North American Review.

In reviewing the volume of Thoreau's letters edited by Emerson, he began his discussion of Thoreau's work by emphasizing Emerson's influence. He went on to charge Thoreau with "so high a conceit of himself that he accepted without questioning, and insisted on our accepting, his defects and weaknesses of character as virtues and powers peculiar to himself. Whether any part of Lowell's harsh assessment of Thoreau was valid, it was strong criticism by an influential man, published in a respectable periodical.

Lowell's words inevitably prejudiced readers, including potential readers of Thoreau's writings. When A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers appeared in , it was not badly reviewed — even James Russell Lowell had some good things to say of it — but neither was it widely reviewed. Thoreau had assumed the cost of its publication. The publisher, James Munroe of Boston, did not promote it vigorously, and the book did not sell well. Its financial failure prompted Munroe to back out of an agreement to publish Walden.

Ultimately one of Thoreau's most influential writings, "Resistance to Civil Government" did not create much of a ripple on its first publication. Although Thoreau sometimes complained in his journals of the level of comprehension of his lecture audiences, he nevertheless continued to lecture and to work lecture material into publishable form.

In the late s and early s, he was presenting material that would be incorporated into Walden When it finally appeared, then, Walden had already received what amounted to significant advance publicity. The book was published in an edition of two thousand copies in August of by the Boston firm of Ticknor and Fields. As the premier literary publisher in America in the mid-nineteenth century, the company was in a position to see that Thoreau's work was well promoted and distributed.

A sufficient number of notices and reviews appeared to assure broad interest in the book, which sold well. Walden was praised not only by those who knew Thoreau and his writings, but also in a variety of newspapers and magazines around the United States and in England.

The Boston Daily Bee urged, "Get the book. You will like it. It is original and refreshing; and from the brain of a live man. This reception of the book gave Thoreau greater recognition as an author between and his death in than his earlier literary efforts had brought him. Walden was the second and final of Thoreau's books published during his lifetime. He continued to lecture in the mid- to lates and to prepare pieces for magazine publication. The publication of "Chesuncook" in Atlantic Monthly , which was aimed at an educated general audience, indicated the degree to the publication of Walden had elevated Thoreau's status as an author.

Thoreau prepared and revised his manuscript material up until his death. In the last months of his life, he was preparing "Walking," "Autumnal Tints," and "Wild Apples" for publication, but died before they appeared in Atlantic Monthly. They were printed in the June, October, and November issues, respectively. A number of obituaries appeared after the author's death.

Walden and A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers were soon reissued, and they were regularly reprinted after that. Sophia Thoreau, along with Emerson and Ellery Channing, undertook the job of editing her brother's unpublished material. In , Houghton, Mifflin successor to Ticknor and Fields issued the first collected edition of Thoreau's writings, the eleven-volume Riverside Edition, which included the four volumes edited by Blake from the journals.

In , Houghton, Mifflin published the twenty-volume Walden and Manuscript Editions, which included the Journal in fourteen volumes. The spread of Thoreau's reputation after his death was aided by a handful of early admirers. His Worcester friend and correspondent Harrison Gray Otis Blake kept his memory alive through readings from the author's journals, which he had inherited from Sophia Thoreau; Blake also edited four volumes of selections from the journals.

Fred Hosmer, a storekeeper and photographer, gathered an important collection of books by and about Thoreau at a time when few others thought to do so. His collection was given to the Concord Free Public Library in the twentieth century. Hosmer photographed many Concord places associated with Thoreau and corresponded with others who shared his enthusiasm for the author.

Frank Sanborn, who edited and wrote about Thoreau, wished to be viewed as keeper of the author's reputation. In the long run, however, Sanborn's scholarly carelessness offset the value of his efforts in increasing interest in Thoreau. By the late nineteenth century, the work of naturalists John Burroughs and John Muir — both influenced by Thoreau — drew attention to Thoreau as a nature writer. Beginning in , photographer and environmentalist Herbert Wendell Gleason worked to popularize Thoreau by capturing images of the places that Thoreau had known and about which he had written.

Gleason's photographs of Thoreau's world were used to illustrate the editions of Thoreau's collected writings; some of them appeared in National Geographic.

Gleason also presented slide lectures on Thoreau for general audiences. From the late s, the rise of environmentalism focused interest not only on Thoreau's writings but also on the work of Burroughs, Muir, and Gleason.

The publication of Thoreau biographies began during the decade following the author's death and demonstrated growing interest in the man as well as his work.