Henry david thoreau video biography
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These critical perspectives reveal the complex relationships of race and gender to environmental justice and nonviolent protest, exposing the roots of inequality in our shared history and presenting a more complete and accurate record of the past.
Executive produced by Ken Burns and Don Henley, directed by Erik Ewers and Christopher Loren Ewers, produced by Julie Coffman, Susan Shumaker, and Cauley Powell, and written by David Blistein, Henry David Thoreau will premiere on PBS on March 30th and 31st, 2026 (3 hours).
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Henry David Thoreau Biography video
Use online video to study the life and biography of Henry David Thoreau.
Perhaps he would have appreciated that, for he seems to have wanted most to use words to force his readers to rethink their own lives creatively, different though they may be, even as he spent his life rethinking his, always asking questions, always looking to nature for greater intensity and meaning for his life.
Copyright © Ann M.
Woodlief, 2014.
Used with permission from American Transcendentalism Web.
www.transcendentalism.org
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Questions? He and his brother taught school for a while but in 1842, John cut himself while shaving and died of lockjaw in his brother’s arms, an untimely death which traumatized the 25 year old Henry.
Tracing those concepts into the 21st century will demonstrate how ideas – when taken off the page and truly lived – can change the world.
Unlike many “great man” narratives, the film will complicate Thoreau’s story by revealing it, in key moments, through the eyes of others – Native peoples, African Americans, and women – with whom he shared time and space, but not privilege.
His work is so rich, and so full of the complex contradictions that he explored, that his readers keep reshaping his image to fit their own needs. His essay “Civil Disobedience” has inspired activists and reformers from Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., to Colin Kaepernick and Greta Thunberg. Examine excerpts from his Journals and their themes of ecology, and the nature of knowledge, conscience, and religion.
Learning Objectives:
- Gain an understanding of the themes presented in Henry David Thoreau's major works.
- Learn how Transcendentalism was related to the major events and intellectual climate of Henry Thoreau's day and how this movement's tenets are reflected in his works.
- Listen to selected passages from Henry Thoreau's Journals, extolling the virtues of individualism and the inner peace found in living simply and in harmony with nature.
- Survey Henry Thoreau's life and literary career, and explain how his essential beliefs and philosophies, and his conception of democracy, are reflected in present-day American culture.
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His best-known work, Walden, is considered a masterpiece and figures on every list of essential American books.He found greater joy in his daily life than most people ever would.
He traveled often, and his excursions resulted in lectures and his travel books, The Maine Woods,Cape Cod, and A Yankee in Canada, all published posthumously. Other projected books in manuscript and his journal were published by Bradley Dean, namely, Faith in a Seed (1993) and Wild Fruits (2000).
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Who was Henry Thoreau?
A Short Introduction
by Ann M. Woodlief
Henry David Thoreau was a complex man of many talents who worked hard to shape his craft and his life, seeing little difference between them. He worked for several years as a surveyor and making pencils with his father, but at the age of 28 in 1845, wanting to write his first book, he went to Walden pond and built his cabin on land owned by Emerson
While at Walden, Thoreau did an incredible amount of reading and writing, yet he also spent much time “sauntering” in nature.
The film will explore his most far-reaching and forward-thinking ideas: justice for all human beings, the health of our planet and the species it sustains, the quest for a meaningful life, the importance of standing up for one’s beliefs in the public square. Unfortunately, few people were interested in purchasing his book, so he spent the next nine years, surveying and making pencils at times but primarily writing and rewriting (creating seven full drafts) Walden before trying to publish it.
He gave a lecture and was imprisoned briefly for not paying his poll tax, but mostly he wrote a book as a memorial to a river trip he had taken with his brother, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.
After two years (and two months), Thoreau returned to Concord — a bare two miles away which he had visited frequently during his stay at the pond, having completed his experiment in living and his book.
He was a scientist, a storyteller, a seeker of truth, and a fighter for our nation’s first principles.
Yet our knowledge of Henry David Thoreau is incomplete, outdated, and often inaccurate.
In this modern take on the historical documentary, the mythical Thoreau – the hermit of Walden Pond, the imitator of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the nag, the saint – will give way to the human Thoreau: social; genial; an exacting scientist and charismatic speaker; an individual with flaws, self-contradictions, and misjudgments that prove his humanity and hold a mirror to our own.
Henry David Thoreau will be the first nationally broadcast biography of this American original at a time when his wisdom is sorely needed.
simultaneously!
Watch this History of American Literature video entitled The Biography of Henry David Thoreau to study the life and career of Henry David Thoreau, the Transcendentalist author of Walden.
Use our 2 online educational videos to trace the life and career of Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), the Transcendentalist writer whose celebrated work, Walden, extols the virtues of individualism, self-awareness, and living in harmony with nature.
He was fascinated by the frontier, as seen in his essay on Walking, and in Native Americans, which he planned to write about. While there, Henry read a small book by his Concord neighbor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, and in a sense he never finished exploring its ideas — although always definitely on his own terms, just as he explored everything!
Born in 1817, one of his first memories was of staying awake at night “looking through the stars to see if I could see God behind them.” One might say he never stopped looking into nature for ultimate Truth.
Henry grew up very close to his older brother John, who taught school to help pay for Henry’s tuition at Harvard.
He supported himself by surveying and making a few lectures, often on his experience at Walden pond.
Many readers mistake Henry’s tone in Walden and other works, thinking he was a cranky hermit. Many memorials were penned by his friends, including Emerson’s eulogy and Louisa May Alcott’s poem, Thoreau’s Flute.
Over the years, Thoreau’s reputation has been strong, although he is often cast into roles — the hermit in the wilderness, the prophet of passive resistance (so dear to Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King) — that he would have surely seen as somewhat alien.
His last words were said to be “Moose” and “Indian.” Not only did he leave his two books and numerous essays, but he also left a huge journal, published later in 20 volumes, which may have been his major work-in-progress.