"success unexpected in common hours"

Blazing Reader,

Today is the 171st anniversary of the publication of Walden; or, Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau.

Published on August 9, 1854, the book shares the inner and outward revelations Thoreau had during his experiment living alone in the woods of Walden from 1845-1847. He spent those two years, two months and two days in a cabin he built himself for $28.12.

Here's one of my favourite quotes from his posthumous classic:

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings.

Thoreau died young with little fame. Walden had barely sold 2,000 copies by the time of his death. But, posthumously, it has sold millions of copies, becoming an icon of American literature. I think it's fair to say he realized "success unexpected in common hours."

John C.A. Manley

PS Thoreau famously said, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." But you can break free the masses and purchase yourself a copy of Walden.

PPS As my readers know, I've been working on a historical fiction about the arrest of Henry David Thoreau in 1846 (and the arrest of Stefanie Müller in 2020). You can read more about it here: Henry David Thoreau and "COVID Disobedience" .

John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona, All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of philosophical fiction that are "so completely engaging that you find yourself alternately laughing, gasping, hanging on for dear life." Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber.