The Literary World of Henry Thoreau

This page is an expansion of the annotations found in Walden. Thoreau was well educated in the manner of his time, and in early writings he does not hesitate to show this, but many of his references are to people who may not be as familiar to us as they were to him. The links below provide information on thirty-five remarkable men and women that Thoreau mentioned or quoted, in order by date of birth, or alphabetically by name. Together, they create a window into the world of the New England intellectual of the 1840's and 1850's.

• Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.) "Responsible for the earliest surviving Greek tragedies ... Aeschylus made Greek drama deal with profound moral and religious concepts. He won 13 victories at the Greater Dionysia, the annual dramatic festival held in Athens."
• Kong Fu Zi - Confucius (551-479 B.C.) "the truth and importance of his words resonate today when they are heard, because Confucius' teachings developed in reaction to the times in which he lived -- and our times are very much like his."
• Meng-tse (372?-287? B.C.) "The eventual success of Confucius ideas owes much to his followers in the two centuries following his death"
• Marcus Porcius Cato (234-149 B.C.) "His early farm upbringing resulted in a lifelong interest in agriculture and the writing of his De Agri Cultura in 160 BC which is the oldest Latin literary encyclopedia in existence today."
• Ovid (43 B.C.-17 A.D.) "Ovid was the first major Roman Poet to come of age wholly in the Augustan Age--the beginning of the Roman Empire."
• Peter Abelard (1079-1142) "Abelard from his earliest years showed an aptitude and inclination for an academic career, and as a young man entered the University of Paris, where he rapidly acquired a reputation for intelligence, wit, debating skill, arrogance, and embarrassing his professors."
• Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?-1400) "He is a lively presence in his works, and every reader comes to feel that he knows Chaucer very well. Perhaps we do."
• Michelangelo (1475-1564) "Michelangelo resisted the paintbrush, vowing with his characteristic vehemence that his sole tool was the chisel. .... Only the power of the pope .... forced him to the Sistine and the reluctant achievement of the world's greatest single fresco."
• Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618) "Considering the Queen's evident affection for him, it was not unexpected that she should be displeased with his love affair"
• Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) "Bacon argued that the only knowledge of importance to man was empirically rooted in the natural world; and that a clear system of scientific inquiry would assure man's mastery over the world."
• William Shakespeare (1564-1616) "author of the most widely admired and influential body of literature by any individual in the history of Western civilization"
• John Donne (1572-1631) John Donne was born in London into an old Roman Catholic family at a time when anti-Catholic feeling in England was near its height and Catholics were subject to constant harassment by the Elizabethan secret police."
• Thomas Carew (1594?-1640) "Carew had a reputation for mischief that stayed with him all of his adult life. This reputation did nothing to damage his career as a poet, soldier, and courtier."
• Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) "Cromwell proved most capable as a military leader. By the Battle of Marston Moor in1644, Cromwell's New Model Army had routed Cavalier forces and Cromwell earned the nickname 'Ironsides' in the process."
• John Evelyn (1620­1706), "He left an immensely rich literary heritage, which is of great significance for scholars interested in garden history and the histories of intellectual life and architecture."
• William Penn (1644-1718) "Penn did not name his colony after himself (as he feared would be assumed), but after his recently departed father."
• Isaac Newton (1642-1727) "Over a period of 18 or so months ... Newton discovered the expansion of the general binomial (a+b)n, invented the 'fluxions' (differential calculus), demonstrated that white light was composed of different colors of light, discovered the law of gravitation, and laid the foundations of celestial mechanics."
• Alexander Pope (1688-1744) "the first author in English history to be able to sustain himself financially entirely on the profits derived from the publication of his own works"
• Adam Smith (1723­1790) "Much emphasis is placed upon Smith's contribution to the economic field. Underappreciated is his view of religion and morality."
• John Howard (1726-1790) "How was it that a nation mourned this commoner's death as they would a king's or that John Howard's gardener still wept at the mere mention of his name years later?"
• William Cowper (1731-1800) "Despite periods of severe depression (meloncholia), Cowper's eighteen years in Olney and eight at Weston Underwood were marked by his great literary achievements as poet, hymn-writer, letter-writer and translator."
• William Bartram (1739-1823) "He was the first American born botanist and the first naturalist to use the term "sublime" in describing nature."
• Jean-François de Galoup, Comte de La Pérouse (1741-1788) "Among his 114 man of crew there was a large staff of scientists: An astronomer, a physicist, three naturalists, a mathematician, three draftsmen, and even both chaplains were scientifically schooled."
• Count Rumford (1753-1814) "He was well known and widely read in his lifetime and almost immediately in the 1790s his "Rumford fireplace" became state-of-the-art worldwide."
• William Wilberforce (1758-1883) "Sir, when we think of eternity and the future consequence of all human conduct, what is there in this life that shall make any man contradict the dictates of his conscience, the principles of justice and the law of God!"
• Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) "Now instead of Lowlanders, Borderers or Highlanders, all whether MacDonalds, Camerons, Frasers, Stewarts, Carruths, Burns or Scotts called themselves simply Scots. All this is due in the main to Sir Walter Scott."
• David Ricardo (1772-1823) "While Adam Smith was the first great classical economist, David Ricardo was the second. .... Smith saw trade as, among other things, a way of promoting efficiency."
• Merriwether Lewis (1774-1809) "Commanded the first exploration by white people of the Missouri and Columbia rivers and the area between them."
• Elizabeth Fry (1780-1845) "When she went in some of the women were fighting, and the turnkeys thought she would be in real danger. She went in calmly and, picking up a child, asked the mothers 'Is there not something we can do for these innocent little children?'"
• Sir John Franklin (1786-1847) "English rear admiral and explorer whose ill-fated expedition (1845) is credited with having proved the existence of the Northwest Passage."
• Ida Pfeiffer (1797-1858) "Ida went first to the Holy Land, ostensibly on a pilgrimage, knowing that in choosing this destination she would encounter less disapproval from family and friends, who were already alarmed at her decision to travel alone."
• Nicolo Paganini (1782-1840) "His playing astonished the listeners of his day, many of whom believed he was in touch with supernatural powers. He could perform complex works using only one of the four strings of the violin, and he played chords of two and three notes,      creating the illusion that more than one violin was being played."
• Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888) "Surely dear father some good angel or elf dropped a talisman in your cradle that gave you force to walk thro life in quiet sunshine while others groped in the dark... - Louisa May Alcott to her father"
• Justus von Liebig (1803-1873) "In Agricultural Chemistry (1842), he presented organic chemistry in its application to physiology and pathology ... attempting to demonstrate that body heat and muscular action could be derived from the oxidation of foodstuffs."
• Charles Darwin (1809-1882) "Darwin's theory of evolutionary selection holds that variation within species occurs randomly and that the survival or extinction of each organism is determined by that organism's ability to adapt to its environment."