Thoreau's notes on living alone in the woods in a house he fashioned himself for over two years. As a noted American author and philosopher who is most famous for Walden, his essay on civil disobedience, and his call for the preservation of wilderness. He was a lifelong abolitionist, delivering lectures that attacked the Fugitive Slave Law, praised the writings of Wendell Phillips, and even defended radical John Brown, though at the time Thoreau knew little of Brown's violent deeds.