Henry David Thoreau. Biography Henry David Thoreau was a complex man of many talents who worked hard to shape his craft and his life, seeing little difference between them.
Born in 1817, one of his first memories was of staying awake at night "looking through the stars to see if I could see God behind them. " One might say he never stopped looking into nature for ultimate Truth. Henry grew up very close to his older brother John, who taught school to help pay for Henry's tuition at Harvard. While there, Henry read a small book by his Concord neighbor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, and in a sense he never finished exploring its ideas -- although always definitely on his own terms, just as he explored everything! Welcome to The Thoreau Society. The Thoreau Reader. SEP on Henry David Thoreau.