Thoreau

While I know Henry David Thoreau is extremely well known to most English students I had to pick him for my bio simply because he is one of the most interesting poets ever. Born in 1817 , he grew up in Massachusettes and graduated from Harvard. From 1835- 1837 Thoreau worked as a teacher until he contracted TB. For a short time Thoreau lived and worked for Ralph Waldo Emerson, a poet he had learned about while at Harvard. It was Emerson who encouraged Thoreau to publish "The Dial" a transendentalist literary magazine.
As one of the first Transendentalists Thoreau spent 28 dollars to build a house on Walden Pond. It was there Thoreau created Civil Disobedience, which was written after he spent time in jail for not paying his taxes to protest the Mexican war and slavery. He spent two years living alone at Waldon Pond. He spent his time away from materialistic things and worked odd jobs in a town nearby. Mostly he watched nature and wrote. Thoreau kept a journal of his time at Walden which later became a book of the same name. What I think makes Thoreau great is that he not only was a profound and groundbreaking writer, but that he was also an evironmentalist. He believed in a world full of naturalism which he lived during his time at Walden.