Henry David Thoreau was an illustrious poet and essayist who lived close to nature. Thoreau and his group of writers believed in transcendentalism which stresses the superiority of the spiritual matters over the physical world.
Thoreau was born on July 12, 1817, in Massachusetts. He studied Greek, Latin, and German at Harvard. Thoreau struck up a friendship with Emerson in Harvard. He became a professional poet in the early 1840s.
He began to write nature poetry in 1840s under the guidance of his friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson. ‘Walden; or, Life in the Woods’, published in 1854, was his magnum opus. The book is considered as one of the great works of world literature.
The transcendentalists started a magazine named The Dial with Emerson as a guiding force. Thoreau’s poems ‘Sympathy’, ‘To the Maiden in the East’, and his essay on the Roman poet ‘Aulus Persius Flaccus’, appeared in the inaugural issue published in July 1840.
An essay by Thoreau titled ‘Natural History of Massachusetts’ was also published in The Dial. The last issue of The Dial came out in April 1844. Henry Thoreau passed away in 1862.