Thoreau Henry David (1817–62), American naturalist and writer. Born in Concord, Massachusetts, he attended Harvard (1833–37) and then returned to Concord to study nature and write, making a frugal living as a schoolteacher, land surveyor, and pencil maker. Commentators have emphasized three aspects of his life: his love and penetrating study of the flora and fauna of the Concord area, recorded with philosophical reflections in Walden (1854); his continuous pursuit of simplicity in the externals of life, thus avoiding a life of ‘quiet desperation’; and his acts of civil disobedience. The last item has been somewhat overemphasized; not paying a poll tax by way of protest was not original with Thoreau. However, his essay ‘Resistance to Civil Government’ immortalized his protest and influenced people like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., in later years. Thoreau eventually helped runaway slaves at considerable risk; still, he considered himself a student of nature and not a reformer. See also TRANSCENDENTALISM. E.H.M.