So many lauded and resonant figures have their lesser-known and less-often recognised stories. These ‘lost’ narratives deserve our renewed attention, and certainly there’s a version of Henry David Thoreau that we’ve largely tended to forget.

Poll tax protester, supporter of one of the most divisive figures in American politics, fierce critic of government, Thoreau is not quite the gentle soul that the reaction to his most famous work, Walden – an account of his two-year experiment living alone on the shores of Walden Pond at the edge of Concord, Massachusetts – would suggest. ...

 

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