Walden Wood Was My Forest Walk (1855–1861)

Abstract In his new publication, Walden, Thoreau had achieved an extraordinary biography of place, so skillfully that he eventually garnered immortality for “Walden” as book, pond, and back-to-nature idea, all three. As Robert Frost once said of Thoreau’s masterpiece, “Think of the success of a man’s pulling himself together under one one-word title. Enviable!” The fame of the text and its writer continues almost inexorably to grow; according to scholar Joel Myerson, “Today, Walden is arguably the most widely translated and available book by an American author.” Researchers have published “well over one hundred articles and sections of books dealing solely with Walden,” plus full-length monographs, to make a low estimate.