Audiobook · read by volunteers
Walden
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
Read by Gord Mackenzie · 23 chapters · 14 h 17
About the book
For two years, two months and two days, Henry David Thoreau lived in a small cabin he had built himself on the shore of Walden Pond, and Walden is the record of that experiment. It is neither a novel nor a conventional memoir. It is a patient, curious and sometimes sharply critical book about how to live: what we really need, what we waste our days on, and what a person finds when the noise is turned down. Thoreau talks about work and money, reading and solitude, the sound of the train, the loons on the water and the beans he planted in his field. He is by turns practical, playful and stern. The twenty-three recorded parts, read by a single voice over more than fourteen hours, invite you to slow down and listen as he watches the seasons turn. Few books have asked so quietly what a good life might be.
Introduction
Henry David Thoreau, who lived from 1817 to 1862, was an American essayist, naturalist and philosopher from Concord, Massachusetts. Walden, published in 1854, is the work for which he is best known, and it is often counted among the best-known non-fiction books written by an American. It describes the two years he spent beside Walden Pond, but compresses them into the course of a single year, following the changing seasons from summer to spring.
The book belongs to the tradition of New England Transcendentalism, a movement that valued self-reliance, direct experience of nature and independence of thought. Thoreau uses his life at the pond as a way to question the habits of his society. Chapters on economy, reading, sounds, solitude and higher laws sit beside close observations of ponds, ice, animals and plants. Humour and irony are never far away, and neither is a certain stubbornness.
Walden has influenced generations of readers, from nature writers to people interested in simple living, and its ideas about conscience and independence continue to be discussed. It is a book that rewards slow reading, which makes it well suited to listening.
This LibriVox recording offers twenty-three parts and runs for about fourteen hours. It is read by a single volunteer, Gord Mackenzie, and can be enjoyed in short sessions, one chapter at a time, or as a long companion for a quiet week. Many people return to it at different ages and find different books inside it: a guide to simple living, a nature journal, a political essay or a meditation on solitude.
Public domain
Henry David Thoreau died in 1862: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text