government's legal recognition of it, Thoreau refused to pay his poll tax. In 1846, to demonstrate his opposition to slavery and the U. When the remainder were returned to Thoreau, he wrote in his journal, 'I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself.' Walden, when it was eventually published in 1854, was more warmly received (although it did not go into a second printing until after his death). Of the one thousand copies printed, only two hundred were sold. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers was not published until 1849 when he guaranteed to reimburse the publisher for any loss. Some of his writing from this time is in the Berg Collection.

It was during this time that he wrote A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849) and the draft of Walden Or, Life in the Woods (1854). The simplicity with which he lived allowed him to work only six weeks each year and devote the rest of his time to writing and living. In 1845 he moved to Walden Pond where he remained for a little over two years. There he came to know and be associated with the New England Trancendentalists, a group that included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, Jones Very, Elizabeth Peabody and Orestes Brownson.ĭescribing himself for a questionnaire he filled out on the tenth anniversary of his graduation from Harvard, Thoreau wrote, 'I am a Schoolmaster-a private Tutor, a Surveyor-a Gardener, a Farmer-a Painter, I mean a House Painter, a Carpenter, a Mason, a Day-Laborer, a Pencil-Maker, a Glasspaper Maker, a Writer, and sometimes a Poetaster.' Thoreau (1817-1862) was born in Concord, Massachusetts where he lived most of his life.

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