For Thoreau, living at Walden Pond was a noble experiment in three ways. First, Thoreau was intent upon resisting the debilitating effects of the industrial revolution (division of labor, the mind-dulling repetition of factory work, and a materialist vision of life). The Walden experiment allowed him to "turn back the clock" to the simpler, agrarian way of life that was quickly disappearing in New England. Second, by reducing his expenditures, he reduced the time necessary to support himself, and thus he could devote more time to the perfection of his art. While at the pond, he was able to write most of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. And third, he and Emerson had asserted that one can most easily experience the Ideal, or the Divine, through nature; at Walden Pond, Thoreau was able to test continually the validity of this theory by living closely, day-to-day, with nature.
Thoreau left the pond in 1847, and when Emerson went to England in the fall of that year, Thoreau once again joined the household to look after the family's needs. Upon Emerson's return in 1848, Thoreau moved back to his parents' home, where he remained until his death.
Between 1847 and 1854, Thoreau spent his time walking through the countryside, making pencils, surveying, and devoting himself to a new passion: the composition of Walden. The work went through many painstaking revisions during those seven years; yet when it appeared, the product of those years of labor was not well received. While it was not so great a failure as A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (275 sold; 75 given away), and while it did receive some good reviews, it hardly fulfilled Thoreau's dream of becoming a major spokesman for the transcendentalist movement. He did not complain about the poor reception given to Walden, but it must have been a major psychological setback. Viewed today, its publication marked the high point of his career, and his contemporaries virtually ignored it.
