First published in 1849, this book is ostensibly the narrative of a boat trip from Concord, Massachusetts to Concord, New Hampshire and back, which Thoreau had taken with his brother John in 1839. As John had died from tetanus in 1842, Thoreau wrote the book as a tribute to his memory. The book’s first draft was completed while the author was living at Walden Pond. Upon completing the work, Thoreau was unable to find a publisher willing to take it on and so had it published at his own expense. Few copies of the book sold and Thoreau was left with several hundred extra copies, finding himself in debt.
While the book may appear to be a travel journal, broken up into chapters for each day, with some literal description of the journey from Concord, Massachusetts, down the Concord River to the Middlesex Canal, much of the text is in the form of digressions by the Harvard-educated author on diverse topics such as religion, poetry, and history. Thoreau relates these topics back to his own life experiences, often framed by the rapid changes taking place in his native New England during the Industrial Revolution, many of these being changes that Thoreau laments.