Henry David Thoreau's earliest letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson (1842)

The earliest extant letter from Henry David Thoreau to fellow Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson. Three years later, Thoreau would venture to Walden Pond (located on Emerson's property) to live in semi-isolation and reflect on the merits of simple living and self-reliance, and in 1854, he published his reflection on that time as Walden; or, Life in the Woods.

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