There were many key figures that made the transcendental movement work, but one of the more important was Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau was born in 1817, in Concord, Massachusetts as David Henry Thoreau, his christened name. His father, John, was a shopkeeper in Concord before he moved the family to Boston in search for more business opportunities. In 1823, John moved his family back to Concord where he established financial stability as a pencil manufacturer. Prior his father's success in pencil manufac

Henry returned home to the family business of pencil manufacturing for a steady income and stability. Henry quickly became an asset to the family business when used his engineering talent to improve their product. He invented a machine that ground the plumbago for the leads into a very fine powder and developed a combination of the finely ground plumbago and clay that resulted in a pencil that produced a smooth, regular line. He also improved the method of assembling the casing and the lead. Henry's pencils were the first produced in America that equaled those made by the German company, Faber, whose pencils set the standard for quality. In the 1850s, when the electrotyping process of printing began to be used widely, the Henry shifted from pencil-making to supplying large quantities of their finely ground plumbago to printing companies. Henry continued to run the family company after his father's death in 1859. When he was questioned about trying to improve his pencil production, he replied, "Why should I? I would not do again what I have done once."

At Harvard, a heavy emphasis was placed on classic works. Henry studied Latin and Greek grammar or composition for three of his four years. He also took courses in mathematics, English, history, and mental, natural, and intellectual philosophy. Modern languages were voluntary, and Thoreau chose to take Italian, French, German, and Spanish. Thoreau never stood higher than the middle of his class. Henry was never happy about the teaching methods used at Harvard, but he did appreciate and take advantage of the lifelong rights to the library at Harvard for which his degree qualified him. He read a great deal of metaphysical poets such as Donne, Vaughan and other British authors such as Carlye. Despite his dislike for the teaching style of Harvard professors, Henry did meet naturalist Louis Agassiz and a rhetorics professor Edward Tyrel Channing, both of which were great influences on the young Henry.

Thoreau focused mainly on two subjects in all of his works. Primarily his focus was on nature, and secondly on the question of how people should live. He wrote a complete series of essays that dealt with the issues of personal exploration and resurrection. A new wave of reform movements swept across New England in the 1830's and 1840's involving issues ranging from women's rights temperance, from education to religion, from diet to sex. Thoreau was not a supporter of these reforms. The only movement Thoreau could find an alliance with was abolitionism. "But idealist as he was, standing for abolition of slavery, abolition of tariffs, almost for abolition of government," stated Emerson of Thoreau's abolitionist way in his essay "Thoreau."

The Transcendentalism wave died out in the 1860's, but it has had lasting effects until today. Though its spread wasn't very far, it made Concord an intellectual capital.

He also collected specimens for Louis Agassiz, who had brought the study of natural history to Harvard after Thoreau graduated, but he was not compensated for this work. He lectured several times a year at lyceums and private homes from Maine to New Jersey. These lectures were important in his process of composition. Most of the ideas and themes in his essays and books were first presented to the public in lectures, but they were not fruitful.

In 1823, Emerson began studying for the ministry. Descended from a long line of ministers, deeply spiritual in nature and equally a passionate seeker after truth, full of ideals of helpfulness and philanthropy, this was the natural course; but his activities in this profession were brief. He was ordained in 1829 as associate pastor of the Second Church in Boston, the historic Old North, which in the preceding century had flourished for sixty years under the ministry of the Mathers, father and son. It was now one of the important pulpits of Unitarianism. The young minister, who in a few months became the sole incumbent, t

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