Thoreau in His Own Time

More than any other Transcendentalist of his time, Henry David Thoreau embodied the full complement of the movement's ideals and vocations. The Thoreau of our time - valorized anarchist, founding environmentalist, and fervid advocate of civil disobedience - did not exist in the nineteenth century. In this rich and appealing collection, Sandra Harbert Petrulionis untangles Thoreau's multiple identities by offering a wide range of nineteenth-century commentary as the opinions of those who knew him evolved over time.