ABSTRACT
David Henry Thoreau was well before his time in addressing the problems that we are causing by how we live. He is viewed as a cultural icon and his elegantly written book Walden is a classic of environmental writing and American literature more widely. He was influenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson whom he knew, and by von Humboldt’s classic work, Cosmos. The chapter explores these relationships. Thoreau established the tradition of nature writing in the United States, but it is for his posing of questions about how American society was developing economically, environmentally, and democratically that we should perhaps remember him, as his focus was on wider sustainability issues rather than just narrow environmental ones.
