After studying at the University of Lund, Thorild became a tutor. When a literary prize competition was held in Stockholm, he entered Passionerna (1781; “The Passions”), his first poem. Although it won only honourable mention, Passionerna, a philosophic expression of pantheistic feeling for nature, greatly startled literary Stockholm. Thorild became increasingly involved in writing on social reform and philosophy during his later years, but he continued to write poetry, including the Götamannasånger (written 1805; “Gothic Men's Songs”), which comprised aphoristic formulations reminiscent of the ancient Swedish legal style. He pleaded for positive literary evaluation in his En critik öfver critiker (1791–92; “A Critique of Critics”), an advocacy of poetic freedom by the first Romanticist in Swedish literature. Thorild became a heroic symbol of freedom in the wake of the French Revolution. (By 1794 he had distanced himself from its excesses.) Banished for political agitation after the 1792 assassination of Gustav III, in 1795 he was appointed professor and librarian at the University of Greifswald in Pomerania and remained there until his death.