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)

Around the 69-70 footnote in this article a rendering of Emerson is misidentified as Thoreau.

Around the 69-70 footnote in this article a rendering of Emerson is misidentified as Thoreau. 2601:18C:8380:9D60:7049:9F31:DF1A:94EA (talk) 19:32, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

 Not done. Thank you for brining this up. However: it is, in fact, a picture of Thoreau. Thoreau and Emerson looked very similar as young men. Professor Penguino (talk) 03:26, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

It is sourced from the Walden official website. You can see more information about the rendering on its page on Wikimedia Commons. Professor Penguino (talk) 03:29, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Sexuality

I think there should be more than one source for the claim that he wrote a homoerotic poem about an 11 year old. I looked the poem up read it. Google searched and it seems the internet is split between this version of the story and he is talking about his younger self. Obviously Google search isn’t researching, but the fact it doesn’t pull up any real evidence suggests there needs to be more research before this is stated as fact. 107.161.47.185 (talk) 05:29, 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)