Happy 200th Birthday, Henry David Thoreau! In your honor, we’ve added a new text to The Readers’ Thoreau, Digital Thoreau’s platform for reading Thoreau socially.
The text is “Walking,” one of Thoreau’s most popular essays, published in 1862.
As our “Note on the Text” explains,
On April 23, 1851, Thoreau “tried out a new lecture, entitled ‘The Wild,’ on the Concord Lyceum and on May 31 repeated it in Worcester. It was to become one of his favorite lectures, one that he repeated many times, working it over and adding to it each time until eventually it became large enough to break into two, the new part entitled “Walking.” Because he knew the market for it would vanish once it reached print, he was careful not to have either part published in his lifetime. But just before his death, he put the two back together again and sold the essay to the Atlantic Monthly where it was published in the issue of June 1862 . . .” (Walter Harding, The Days of Henry Thoreau, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962: 286).
Start reading “Walking” now or register an account on the main site and join the public group “General Discussion” to start a conversation in the margin.