“October is the month for painted leaves,” wrote Henry David Thoreau in a wonderful essay called “Autumnal Tints” that a venerable magazine dedicated to “Literature, Art, and Politics” known as The Atlantic Monthly—since shortened to The Atlantic—published in its October 1862 edition. Then as now, being featured in its pages was an honor and a coup for any writer, and HDT no doubt would have seen his brand rise in popularity, and his book sales soar, but sadly, Thoreau had succumbed to tuberculosis several months before that issue hit the newsstands. Fame and perhaps fortune would have to follow posthumously.

And they certainly have. The writer of Walden, the account of HDT’s “two years, two months, and two days” in a cabin by Walden Pond in the “wilds” of Concord, Massachusetts, along wi

See Full Page