Walden
Walden, or, Life in the Woods is the 1854 record of the experiment Henry David Thoreau conducted between July 1845 and September 1847, when he lived alone in a small ten-by-fifteen-foot cabin he had built himself on land owned by his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson on the wooded northern shore of Walden Pond, just over a mile from the village of Concord, Massachusetts. The book is organized as eighteen long essays, opening with the famous Economy chapter in which Thoreau accounts in scrupulous detail for every plank, every nail, and every dollar of his sojourn, and moving through the seasons of the pond, of the surrounding forest, and of his own thinking. It is in turns ornery, lyrical, sermonizing, and quietly mystical. Walden became, slowly, the founding text of American nature writing and a touchstone for every later generation that has tried to imagine a less encumbered life. Thoreau's prose still reads with a startling directness.
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about Walden
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
On July 4, 1845, Henry David Thoreau moves into a one-room cabin he has built himself on the north shore of Walden Pond, on land borrowed from Ralph Waldo Emerson outside Concord.
He lived in a cabin on Walden Pond for two years, two months, and two days from 1845 to 1847. He visited family and friends in nearby Concord regularly during that time.
Thoreau's prose is dense by modern standards, with long sentences and frequent classical allusions. Many readers approach it as a book of essays rather than a continuous narrative.
Walden was written by Henry David Thoreau, published in 2021 by Collector's Library.
Walden is 360 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Walden takes most readers 5 to 8 hours to finish.
Walden is a standalone novel by Henry David Thoreau, not part of a series.
Walden is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.