The Main Woods and Walden - two novels by Henry David Thoreau

Walden (first published as Walden; or, Life in the Woods) by Henry David Thoreau is an American classic. The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, and manual for self reliance. Published in 1854, it details Thoreau's sojourn in a cabin near Walden Pond, amidst woodland owned by his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, near Concord, Massachusetts.
Thoreau did not intend to live as a hermit, for he received visitors and returned their visits. Rather, he hoped to isolate himself from society to gain a more objective understanding of it. Simple living and self-sufficiency were Thoreau's other goals, and the whole project was inspired by transcendentalist philosophy, a central theme of the American Romantic Period. As Thoreau made clear in his book, his cabin was not in wilderness but at the edge of town, not far from his family home.