Henry David Thoreau was no reclusive layabout, contrary to the popular vision of his hermitage at Walden Pond. When he retreated to the woods outside Concord, Massachusetts, from 1845 to 1847 in an attempt “to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life,” he did not just sit alone and still in the elements (though he did do plenty of that). In between his frequent jaunts to town, Thoreau also built a cabin, tended a bean field, and honed his writerly craft, all the while reflecting deeply on the value of labor both within and beyond the capitalist marketplace he had temporarily left.

Outside of Walden, he felt the sting of that market in his labors. He barely scraped by as a writer; up until his deathbed, he chased editors down for pay. Meanwhile, he supplemented his meager literary income by selling his many talents: teaching, carpentry, pencil-making, and, most significantly, surveying. “I have as many trades as fingers,” he boasted.

Laboring was not a distraction from Thoreau’s philosophical work; it was integral to it. Capitalism’s complex division of labor both fascinated and repulsed him as he came to realize that labor was something more than activity that produced value for the market. Throughout his works are passages reflecting on the humanity and interest of craft activity: farming, pottery, logging, carpentry, blacksmithing, fishing, hide-curing, canoe-building, thread-making, candle-making, and more.