ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -Then, in 1850, the Thoreau family sold the “The Texas House” and bought the so-called “Yellow House” at 255 Main Street, a home with a wing at the rear for John Thoreau’s pencil shop where Henry also sometimes worked.

Detailed explanation-2: -Thoreau is highly critical of materialism and consumption. He argues that when people have a lot of wealth they begin to concentrate on how to spend their money, instead of on how they should live their lives.

Detailed explanation-3: -He was a well-known advocate of transcendentalism, or the belief in the inherent goodness of people and nature, making a virtue of self-reliance. In his essay … On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, Thoreau once wrote “That government is best which governs not at all”.

Detailed explanation-4: -Thoreau’s importance as a philosophical writer was little appreciated during his lifetime, but his two most noted works, Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854) and “Civil Disobedience” (1849), gradually developed a following, and by the latter half of the 20th century, had become classic texts in American thought.