A Biography of Henry David Thoreau

FAIN: FT-12868-76

Stephen Donadio
Middlebury College (Middlebury, VT 05753-6004)

To continue research for a full-scale biography which seeks to explore some of the often contradictory impulses which produced Thoreau's most characteristic utterances. More than 100 years after his death, Thoreau is regularly characterized as exemplary and quintessentially American, although it is generally agreed that for a variety of reasons, no adequate account has yet been given of .the logic of his personality. Study will focus not only on Walden and A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers but also on essays and addresses like those on Civil Disobedience Slavery in Massachusetts and John Brown. Biography will also deal with the Transcendental thoughts of that period which persist in our own time.