Thoreau, Henry David

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Thoreau, Henry David (1817–62) US writer and naturalist. He was a friend of fellow transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson, who encouraged him to keep the journals from which he quarried much of his later work. An ardent individualist, he experimented in living a near-solitary life, rejecting materialism and finding fulfilment in observing plant and animal life. His essay Civil Disobedience (1849) influenced many passive resistance movements. See also transcendentalism

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