August 9

In literary history

• 1854Henry David Thoreau published Walden, his account of two years in a cabin he had built for twenty-eight dollars near Concord. He walked back to his mother's most evenings for dinner; the solitude was real, but the wilderness less so.

Writers born on August 9

• Philip Larkin (1922)

The Daily Canon for August 9

Aubade by Philip Larkin (1977).