Talk:Henry David Thoreau

The Thoreau family and the Sewall family
On June 17, 1839, according to The Walden.org log of 1839:

"Edmund Sewall arrives in Concord with his mother to visit his grandmother, the Thoreaus’ boarder, Mrs. Joseph Ward. Over the next several days, Thoreau takes him sailing on the Concord River, hiking to the Cliffs, and to Walden Pond (The Days of Henry David Thoreau, 77)."

It is weird synth for the article to describe the five days eleven-year-old Edmund Sewall stayed with Thoreau's family as five days of hiking for Sewall with HDT. In fact, young Sewall wrote his own extended account of his five days of exploring Concord with John Thoreau as well as with HDT--and his journal of those days can be read online.

The "Sexuality" section of this article should say more about Thoreau's relationships with women. Until I fixed it myself, it did not even mention his proposal of marriage to Edmund's sister. It still doesn't mention his proposal from Sophia Ford. Louisa May Alcott who took walks in the woods with Thoreau when she was a teenager, modeled romantic heroes in several of her books on Thoreau, although there's no evidence he returned her feelings at all. Here's to an NPOV and accurate-as-we-can-make it "Sexuality" section. HouseOfChange (talk) 19:11, 22 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Yes! The lack of evidence for the claims and selective presentation is weird to me. It’s like someone is trying to intentionally create a narrative about him. Is there a way to make it more reflective of what is known? His siblings didn’t marry either and I think it should be in the section too. 107.161.47.185 (talk) 05:37, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Plumbago and electrotyping
"Later, Thoreau converted the pencil factory to produce plumbago, a name for graphite at the time, which was used in the electrotyping process.[47]"

The Conrad article cited in support of this statement does not support it. The author places the Thoreaus' highly refined grinding process in the 1830's and electrotyping was not invented until the 1840's so that was not the motivation. Conrad does not give any evidence that the Thoreaus supplied graphite to anyone doing electrotyping. Tpmpmurphy (talk) 14:55, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

Libertarianism and anarchy banners too dominant
Banners for libertarianism and anarchism dominate the appearance of this article. Yet Thoreau was neither a libertarian nor an anarchist.

And I just reverted a new effort to add yet another similar piece of promotionalism, a new anarchism footer. I do not believe these modern movements should get so much free advertising on the page of a writer who may have inspired them but whose ideas are not central to either cause. HouseOfChange (talk) 07:04, 13 June 2024 (UTC)