What was Thoreau's Experiement on Walden Pond?

Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts in 1817 coincidentally is where he died in 1862. After graduating from Havard University, he became good friends and protege with Ralph Waldo Emerson. “Although the two American thinkers had a turbulent relationship due to serious philosophical and personal differences, they had a profound and lasting effect upon one another.” As stated on stanford.edu. During his lifetime he only published two books, along with essays that were first delivered as lectures. Thoreau lived a simple life he made his living by teaching briefly and a pencil maker for a short time but he lived mostly off being a land surveyor. Thoreau remained unmarried though he was believed to have loved deeply at least twice and was close with family and friends.


In 1845, Thoreau moved to Walden Pond, which was owned by his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson. Thoreau built a cabin on the pond. “ I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what it had to teach me, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” as Thoreau stated Walden. Simplicity was the main theme of all of Thoreau’s writing, he found this simplicity in his one room cabin on Walden Pond. “It was a place for him to find solitude while he wrote, but for his ever-questioning mind it was also an experiment in self-reliance and living close to nature.” As stated on online-literature.com.


During his stay at Walden Pond, Throreau finished his first book A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and wrote his second book Walden. He also spent one night in jail for not paying a poll tax in a rebellion against the government’s war and slavery, which is stated in the video below.



At forty-four, Henry David Thoreau died in Concord, Massachusetts of tuberculosis. Though he only wrote two books, they are even more popular today than they were in his time.