Henry David Thoreau was an American philosopher, intellectual, scientist, and writer and his work made him one of America’s most studied and celebrated figures. Through masterwork Walden combined with his poetry, lectures, and essays, Thoreau solidified himself as an icon of American history.

Thoreau was born on July 12th, 1817 in Concord, Massachusetts. He attended a public and later a private school in Concord, excelling academically. Later, he attended Harvard University, though he struggled to finish his education due to financial and health setbacks. Unfortunately for Thoreau, he graduated just in time for the Panic of 1837. After a brief stint as a teacher, Thoreau began working in his father’s pencil factory until he and his brother, John, opened their own school in 1838. The school stayed open until John fell ill in 1841 and Thoreau could no longer handle the load on his own. Once again, Thoreau found himself working under his father in the pencil factory.

That changed when Thoreau was invited to work as a live-in handy-man for his neighbor, Ralph Waldo Emerson. At the time, Emerson was already a famous philosopher. He soon became Thoreau’s mentor and friend. Thoreau was influenced by Emerson’s transcendentalist philosophy and soon adopted it as his own. Under Emerson’s mentorship, Thoreau pursued a career as a poet. Much of his work was published by the transcendentalist magazine, The Dial.

After years working for Emerson, writing essays and poetry, and working at the family pencil factory, Thoreau grew restless. In 1845, Emerson granted him permission to build a cabin on the piece of land Emerson owned, famously near the shore of Walden pond. Thoreau spent two years and two months living in the woods, and during that time he became close to nature and sought an understanding of life that would bring him wisdom. Thoreau worked one day a week and rested for six days; inverting the normal work week as a transcendental experiment.

During his time in the woods, Throeau wrote his two books, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, a tribute to his late brother, and Walden, his masterwork which began as a lecture and response to questions about his lifestyle that grew into a book. In 1849, the first book was published to little success. Hesitant, Thoreau held off from publishing Walden until 1854, a moderate success.

Thoreau eventually moved back to his parent’s home and returned to the pencil factory while occasionally working as a land surveyor, giving lectures, and publishing essays. Thoreau’s endeavors only brought in moderate income and he never lived long enough to see his fame grow, as is the case for many writers and intellectuals. Thoreau’s legacy does not stop at Walden, he was a staunch abolitionist, a conductor on the Underground Railroad, and advocated for civil disobedience in the face of oppressive government policies in his essay “Resistance to Civil Government.” Thoreau’s philosophy of freedom, nature worship, and individualism lives on in the search for spirituality and transcendence in everyday life.

His last words include the salient line, “Here comes good sailing.”