[Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing right]

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Thoreau faces right in this head-and-shoulders portrait, a detail that sets it apart from many images of him that show him in profile or from the front. The record dates the print to about 1924, which places it nearly sixty years after his death in 1862, so it is a later reproduction of an older likeness rather than a photograph made during his lifetime. Photoengraving was a common method for reproducing images in books and magazines in the early twentieth century, and prints like this one circulated widely among readers of the Transcendentalist writer who lived and worked around Concord, Massachusetts.

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