Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was an American essayist, naturalist and philosopher, and a central figure of New England transcendentalism. He spent two years in a cabin he built beside Walden Pond, an experiment in deliberate living that became his best-known book. His essay on civil disobedience, written after a night in jail for refusing a tax that funded slavery and the Mexican War, later influenced Gandhi and King.