Amos Bronson Alcott
Encyclopedia
Amos Bronson Alcott was an American teacher, writer, philosopher, and reformer. As an educator, Alcott pioneered new ways of interacting with young students, focusing on a conversational style, and avoided traditional punishment. He hoped to perfect the human spirit and, to that end, advocated a vegan
diet before the term was coined. He was also an abolitionist
and an advocate for women's rights.
Born in Connecticut
in 1799, Alcott had only minimal formal schooling before attempting a career as a traveling salesman. Worried about how the itinerant life might negatively impact his soul, he turned to teaching. His innovative methods, however, were controversial, and he rarely stayed in one place very long. His most well-known teaching position was at the Temple School
in Boston. His experience there was turned into two books: Records of a School and Conversations with Children on the Gospels. Alcott became friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson
and became a major figure in transcendentalism
. His writings on behalf of that movement, however, are heavily criticized for being incoherent. Based on his ideas for human perfection, Alcott founded Fruitlands
, a transcendentalist experiment in community living. The project was short-lived and failed after seven months. Alcott continued to struggle financially for most of his life. Nevertheless, he continued focusing on educational projects and opened a new school at the end of his life in 1879. He died in 1888.
Alcott married Abby May
in 1830 and they eventually had four surviving children, all daughters. Their second was Louisa May
, who fictionalized her experience with the family in her novel Little Women
in 1868. Alcott is often criticized for his inability to earn a living and support his family; he often relied on loans from his brother-in-law, Emerson, and others. He was never financially secure until his daughter became a best-selling novelist.
er, Amos Bronson Alcott was born in Wolcott, Connecticut
(only recently renamed from "Farmingbury") on November 29, 1799. His parents were Joseph Chatfield Alcott and Anna Alcott (née Bronson). The family home was in an area known as Spindle Hill, and his father, Joseph Alcox, traced his ancestry to colonial-era settlers in eastern Massachusetts
. The family originally spelled their name "Alcock", later changed to "Alcocke" then "Alcox". Amos Bronson, the oldest of eight children, later changed the spelling to "Alcott" and dropped his first name.
At age six, young Bronson began his formal education in a one-room schoolhouse in the center of town but learned how to read at home with the help of his mother. The school taught only reading, writing, and spelling and he left this school at the age of 10. At age 13, his uncle, Reverend Tillotson Bronson, invited to take him into his home in Cheshire, Connecticut
to be educated and prepared for college. Bronson gave it up after only a month and was self-educated from then on. He was not particularly social and his only close friend was his neighbor and second cousin William Alcott
, with whom he shared books and ideas. Bronson Alcott later reflected on his childhood at Spindle Hill: "It kept me pure... I dwelt amidst the hills... God spoke to me while I walked the fields." Starting at age 15, he took a job working for clockmaker Seth Thomas
in the nearby town of Plymouth
.
At age 17, Alcott passed the exam for a teaching certificate but had trouble finding work as a teacher. Instead, he left home and became a traveling salesman in the American South
, peddling books and merchandise. He hoped the job would earn him enough money to support his parents, "to make their cares, and burdens less... and get them free from debt", though he soon spent most of his earnings on a new suit. At first, he thought it an acceptable occupation but soon worried about his spiritual well-being. In March 1823, Alcott wrote to his brother: "Peddling is a hard place to serve God, but a capital one to serve Mammon
." Near the end of his life, he fictionalized this experience in his book New Connecticut, originally circulated only among friends before its publication in 1881.
, and provided individual slates
to each student — paid for by himself. Alcott had been influenced by educational philosophy of the Swiss
pedagogue Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi
and even re-named his school "The Cheshire Pestalozzi School". His style attracted the attention of Samuel Joseph May
, who introduced Alcott to his sister Abby May
. She called him, "an intelligent, philosophic, modest man" and found his views on education "very attractive". Locals in Cheshire were less supportive and became suspicious of his methods. Many students left and were enrolled in the local common school or a recently re-opened private school for boys. On November 6, 1827, Alcott started teaching in Bristol, Connecticut
, still using the same methods he used in Cheshire, but opposition from the community surfaced quickly; he was unemployed by March 1828. He moved to Boston on April 24, 1828, and was immediately impressed, referring to the city as a place "where the light of the sun of righteousness has risen." He opened the Salem Street Infant School two months later on June 23. Abby May applied as his teaching assistant; instead, the couple were engaged, without consent of the family. They were married at King's Chapel
on May 22, 1830; he was 30 years old and she was 29. Her brother conducted the ceremony and a modest reception followed at her father's house. After their marriage the Alcotts moved to 12 Franklin Street in Boston, a boarding house
run by a Mrs. Newall. Around this time, Alcott also first expressed his public disdain for slavery
. In November 1830, he and William Lloyd Garrison
founded what he later called a "preliminary Anti-Slavery Society", though he differed from Garrison as a nonresistant
.
Attendance at Alcott's school was falling. A wealthy Quaker
named Reuben Haines proposed he and educator William Russell start a new school in Pennsylvania. Alcott accepted and he and his newly-pregnant wife set forth on December 14. The school was established in Germantown
and the Alcotts were offered a rent-free home by Haines. Alcott and Russell were initially concerned that the area would not be conducive to their progressive approach to education and considered establishing the school in nearby Philadelphia instead. Unsuccessful, they went back to Germantown, though the rent-free home was no longer available and the Alcotts instead had to rent rooms in a boarding-house. It was there that their first child, a daughter they named Anna Bronson Alcott
, was born on March 16, 1831, after 36 hours of labor. By the fall of that year, their benefactor Haines died suddenly and the Alcotts again suffered financial difficulty. "We hardly earn the bread", wrote Abby may to her brother, "[and] the butter we have to think about."
The couple's only son was born on April 6, 1831, but lived only a few minutes. The mother recorded: "Gave birth to a fine boy full grown perfectly formed but not living". It was in Germantown that the couple's second daughter was born. Louisa May Alcott
was born on her father's birthday, November 29, 1832, at a half hour past midnight. Bronson described her as "a very fine healthful child, much more so than Anna was at birth." The Germantown school, however, was faltering; soon only eight pupils remained. Their benefactor Haines died before Louisa's birth. He had helped recruit students and even paid tuition for some of them. As Abby wrote, his death "has prostrated all our hopes here." On April 10, 1833, the family moved to Philadelphia, where Alcott ran a day school. As usual, Alcott's methods were controversial; a former student later referred to him as "the most eccentric man who ever took on himself to train and form the youthful mind." Alcott began to believe Boston was the best place for his ideas to flourish. He contacted theologian William Ellery Channing
for support. Channing approved of Alcott's methods and promised to help find students to enroll, including his daughter Mary. Channing also secured aid from Justice Lemuel Shaw
and Boston mayor Josiah Quincy, Jr.
because classes were held at the Masonic Temple
on Tremont Street in Boston. His assistant was Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, later replaced by Margaret Fuller
. Mary Peabody Mann served as a French instructor for a time. The school was briefly famous, and then infamous, because of his original methods. Before 1830, writing (except in higher education) equated to rote drills in the rules of grammar, spelling, vocabulary, penmanship and transcription of adult texts. However, in that decade, progressive reformers such as Alcott, influenced by Pestalozzi as well as Friedrich Fröbel and Johann Friedrich Herbart
, began to advocate writing about subjects from students' personal experiences. Reformers debated against beginning instruction with rules and were in favor of helping students learn to write by expressing the personal meaning of events within their own lives. Alcott's plan was to develop self-instruction on the basis of self-analysis, with an emphasis on conversation and questioning rather than lecturing and drill, which were prevalent in the U.S. classrooms of the time. Alongside writing and reading, he gave lessons in "spiritual culture", which included interpretation of the Gospel
s, and advocated object teaching in writing instruction. He even went so far as to decorate his schoolroom with visual elements he thought would inspire learning: paintings, books, comfortable furniture, and busts or portraits of Plato
, Socrates
, Jesus
, and William Ellery Channing.
During this time, the Alcotts had another child. Born on June 24, 1835, she was named Elizabeth Peabody Alcott
in honor of the teaching assistant at the Temple School. By age three, however, her mother changed her name to Elizabeth Sewall Alcott, after her own mother.
In July 1835, Peabody published her account as an assistant to the Temple School as Record of a School: Exemplifying the General Principles of Spiritual Culture. While working on a second book, Alcott and Peabody had a falling out and Conversations with Children on the Gospels was prepared with help from Peabody's sister Sophia
, published at the end of December 1836. Alcott's methods were not well received; many found his conversations on the Gospels close to blasphemous. For example, he asked students to question if Biblical miracles were literal and suggested that all people are part of God. In the Boston Daily Advertiser
, Nathan Hale
criticized Alcott's "flippant and off hand conversation" about serious topics from the Virgin birth of Jesus to circumcision
. Joseph T. Buckingham
called Alcott "either insane or half-witted" and "an ignorant and presuming charlatan
". The book did not sell well; a Boston lawyer bought 750 copies to use as waste paper.
The temple school was widely denounced in the press. Reverend James Freeman Clarke
was one of Alcott's few supporters and defended him against the harsh response from Boston periodicals. Alcott was rejected by most public opinion and, by the summer of 1837, he had only 11 students left and no assistant after Margaret Fuller moved to Providence, Rhode Island
. The controversy had caused many parents to remove their children and, as the school closed, Alcott became increasingly financially desperate. Remaining steadfast to his pedagogy, a forerunner of progressive and democratic school
ing, he alienated parents in a later "parlor school" by admitting an African American
child to the class, whom he then refused to expel in the face of protests.
put him in such company as Ralph Waldo Emerson
, Orestes Brownson
and Theodore Parker
. He became a member with the Club's second meeting and hosted their third. A biographer of Emerson described the group as "the occasional meetings of a changing body of liberal thinkers, agreeing in nothing but their liberality". Frederick Henry Hedge
wrote of the group's nature: "There was no club in the strict sense... only occasional meetings of like-minded men and women". Alcott preferred the term "Symposium" for their group.
In late April 1840 Alcott moved to the town of Concord
urged by Emerson. He rented a home for $50 a year within walking distance of Emerson's house
; he named it Dove Cottage, though they also called it Concordia Cottage. A supporter of Alcott's philosophies, Emerson offered to help with his writing, which proved a difficult task. After several revisions, for example, he deemed the essay "Psyche" (Alcott's account of how he educated his daughters) unpublishable. Alcott also wrote a series patterned after the work of German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
which were eventually published in the Transcendentalists' journal, The Dial
. Emerson wrote to Margaret Fuller, then editor, that they might "pass muster & even pass for just & great". He was wrong. Alcott's so-called "Orphic
Sayings" were widely mocked for being silly and unintelligible; Fuller herself disliked them but did not want to hurt Alcott's feelings. In the first issue, for example, he wrote:
On July 26, 1840, Abby May gave birth again. Originally referred to as Baby for several months, she was eventually named Abby May after her mother. As a teenager, she changed the spelling of her name to "Abbie" before choosing to use only "May".
With financial support from Emerson, Alcott left Concord on May 8, 1842, to a visit to England, leaving his brother Junius with his family. He met two admirers, Charles Lane
and Henry C. Wright. The two men were leaders of Alcott House
, an experimental school based on Alcott's methods from the Temple School located about ten miles outside of London
. The school's founder, James Pierpont Greaves, had only recently died but Alcott was invited to stay there for a week. Alcott persuaded them to come come to the United States with him; Lane and his son moved into the Alcott house and helped with family chores. Persuaded in part by Lane's abolitionist views
, Alcott took a stand against the John Tyler
administration's plan to annex Texas
as a slave territory and refused to pay
his poll tax
. Abby May wrote in her journal on January 17, 1843, "A day of some excitement, as Mr. Alcott refused to pay his town tax... After waiting some time to be committed [to jail], he was told it was paid by a friend. Thus we were spared the affliction of his absence and the triumph of suffering for his principles." The annual poll tax was only $1.50. The incident inspired Henry David Thoreau
, whose similar protest led to a night in jail and his essay "Civil Disobedience
". Around this time, the Alcott family set up a sort of domestic post office
to curb potential domestic tension. Abby May described her idea: "I thought it would afford a daily opportunity for the children, indeed all of us, to interchange thought and sentiment".
n society. Alcott, however, was still in debt and could not purchase the land needed for their planned community. In a letter, Lane wrote, "I do not see anyone to act the money part but myself." In May 1843, he purchased a 90 acres (364,217.4 m²) farm in Harvard, Massachusetts
. Up front, he paid $1,500 of the total $1,800 value of the property; the rest was meant to be paid by the Alcotts over a two year period. They moved to the farm on June 1 and optimistically named it "Fruitlands" despite only ten old apple trees on the property. In July, Alcott announced their plans in The Dial: "We have made an arrangement with the proprieter of an estate of about a hundred acres, which liberates this tract from human ownership".
Their goal was to regain access to Eden
by finding the correct formula for perfect living, following specific rules governing agriculture, diet, and reproduction. In order to achieve this, they removed themselves from the economy as much as possible and lived independently; unlike a similar project named Brook Farm
, the participants at Fruitlands avoided interaction with local communities. Calling themselves a "consociate family", they agreed to follow a strict vegetarian diet and to till the land without the use of animal labor. After some difficulty, they relented and allowed some cattle to be "enslaved". They also banned coffee, tea, alcoholic drinks, milk, and warm bathwater. They only ate "aspiring vegetables" — those which grew upward — and refused those that grew downward like potatoes. As Alcott had published earlier, "Our wine is water, — flesh, bread; — drugs, fruits." For clothing, they prohibited leather because animals were killed for it, as well as cotton, silk, and wool, because they were products of slave labor. Alcott had high expectations but was often away when the community most needed him as he attempted to recruit more members.
The experimental community was never successful, partly because most of the land was not arable
. Alcott lamented, "None of us were prepared to actualize practically the ideal life of which we dreamed. So we fell apart". Its founders were often away as well; in the middle of harvesting, they left for a lecture tour through Providence, Rhode Island
, New York City, and New Haven, Connecticut
. In its seven months, only 13 people joined, included the Alcotts and Lanes. Other than Abby May and her daughters, only one other woman joined, Ann Page. One rumor is that Page was asked to leave after eating a fish tail with a neighbor. Lane believed Alcott had misled him into thinking enough people would join the enterprise and developed a strong dislike for the nuclear family
. He quit the project and moved to a nearby Shaker
family with his son. After Lane's departure, Alcott fell into a depression and could not speak or eat for three days. Abby May thought Lane purposely sabotaged her family. She wrote to her brother, "All Mr. Lane's efforts have been to disunite us. But Mr. Alcott's... paternal instincts were too strong for him." When the final payment on the farm was owed, Sam May refused to cover his brother-in-law's debts, as he often did, possibly at Abby May's suggestion. The experiment failed, the Alcotts had to leave Fruitlands.
The members of the Alcott family were not happy with their Fruitlands experience. At one point, Abby May threatened that she and their daughters would move elsewhere, leaving Bronson behind. Louisa May Alcott, who was ten years old at the time, later wrote of the experience in Transcendental Wild Oats (1873): "The band of brothers began by spading garden and field; but a few days of it lessened their ardor amazingly."
In January 1844, Alcott moved his family to Still River, a village within Harvard but, on March 1, 1845, the family returned to Concord to live in a home they named "The Hillside" (later renamed "The Wayside
" by Nathaniel Hawthorne
). Both Emerson and Sam May assisted in securing the home for the Alcotts. While living in the home, Louisa began writing in earnest and was given her own room. She later said her years at the home "were the happiest years" of her life; many of the incidents in her novel Little Women
(1868) are based on this period. Alcott renovated the property, moving a barn and painting the home a rusty olive color, as well as tending to over six acres of land. On May 23, 1845, Abby May was granted a sum from her father's estate which was put into a trust fund, granting minor financial security. That summer, Bronson Alcott let Henry David Thoreau
borrow his ax to prepare his home at Walden Pond
.
The Alcotts hosted a steady stream of visitors at The Hillside, including fugitive slaves, which they hosted in secret as a station of the Underground Railroad
. Alcott's opposition to slavery also fueled his opposition to the Mexican–American War
which began in 1846. He considered the war a blatant attempt to extend slavery and asked if the country was made up of "a people bent on conquest, on getting the golden treasures of Mexico into our hands, and of subjugating foreign peoples?"
In 1848, Abby May insisted they leave Concord, which she called "cold, heartless, brainless, soulless". The Alcott family put The Hillside up for rent and moved to Boston. There, next door to Peabody's book store on West Street, Bronson Alcott hosted a series based on the "Conversations" model by Margaret Fuller called "A Course on the Conversations on Man — his History, Resources, and Expectations". Participants, both men and women, were charged three dollars to attend or five dollars for all seven lectures. In March 1853, Alcott was invited to teach fifteen students at Harvard Divinity School
in an extracurricular, non-credit course.
Alcott and his family moved back to Concord after 1857, where he and his family lived in the Orchard House
until 1877. In 1860, Alcott was named superintendent of Concord Schools.
Alcott voted in a presidential election for the first time in 1860. In his journal for November 6, 1860, he wrote: "At Town House, and cast my vote for Lincoln
and the Republican candidates generally — the first vote I ever cast for a President and State officers." Alcott was an abolitionist and a friend of the more radical William Lloyd Garrison. He had attended a rally led by Wendell Phillips
on behalf of 17-year old Thomas Sims
, a fugitive slave on trial in Boston. Alcott was one of several who attempted to storm the courthouse; when gunshots were heard, he was the only one who stood his ground, though the effort was unsuccessful. He had also stood his ground in a protest against the trial of Anthony Burns
. A group had broken down the door of the Boston courthouse but guards beat them back. Alcott stood forward and asked the leader of the group, Thomas Wentworth Higginson
, "Why are we not within?" He then walked calmly into the courthouse, was threatened with a gun, and turned back, "but without hastening a step", according to Higginson.
In 1862, Louisa moved to Washington, D.C.
to volunteer as a nurse. On January 14, 1863, the Alcotts received a telegram that Louisa was sick; Bronson immediately went to bring her home, briefly meeting Abraham Lincoln while there. Louisa turned her experience into the book Hospital Sketches
. Her father wrote of it, "I see nothing in the way of a good appreciation of Louisa's merits as a woman and a writer."
Henry David Thoreau died on May 6, 1862, likely from an illness he caught from Alcott two years earlier. Alcott assisted in arranging Thoreau's funeral in the church he had resigned, at Emerson's request. Only two years later, neighbor Nathaniel Hawthorne died as well. Alcott served as a pallbearer along with Louis Agassiz
, James Thomas Fields
, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
, and others. With Hawthore's death, Alcott worried that few of the Concord notables remained. He recorded in his journal: "Fair figures one by one are fading from sight." The next year, Lincoln was assassinated, which Alcott called "appalling news".
In 1868, Alcott met with publisher Thomas Niles, an admirer of Hospital Sketches. Alcott asked Niles if he would publish a book of short stories by his daughter; instead, he suggested she write a book about girls. Louisa May was not interested initially but agreed to try. "They want a book of 200 pages or more", Alcott told his daughter. The result was Little Women, published later that year. The book, which fictionalized the Alcott family during the girls' coming-of-age years, recast the father figure as a soldier, away from home while he fought in the Civil War
.
Alcott spoke, as opportunity arose, before the "lyceum
s" then common in various parts of the United States, or addressed groups of hearers as they invited him. These "conversations" as he called them, were more or less informal talks on a great range of topics, spiritual, aesthetic and practical, in which he emphasized the ideas of the school of American Transcendentalists led by Emerson, who was always his supporter and discreet admirer. He often discussed Platonic philosophy, the illumination of the mind and soul by direct communion with Spirit; upon the spiritual and poetic monitions of external nature; and upon the benefit to man of a serene mood and a simple way of life.
. Louisa and her parents moved in with Anna as well.
After the death of his wife Abby May on November 25, 1877, Alcott never returned to Orchard House, too heartbroken to live there. He and Louisa May collaborated on a memoir and went over her papers, letters, and journals. "My heart bleeds with the memories of those days", he wrote, "and even long years, of cheerless anxiety and hopeless dependence." Louisa noted her father had become "restless with his anchor gone." They gave up on the memoir project and Louisa burned many of her mother's papers.
On January 19, 1879, Alcott and Franklin Benjamin Sanborn
wrote a prospectus for a new school which they distributed to potentially interested people throughout the country. The result was the Concord School of Philosophy
and Literature, which held its first session in 1879 in Alcott's study in the Orchard House
. In 1880 the school moved to the Hillside Chapel, a building next to the house, where he held conversations and, over the course of successive summers, as he entered his eighties, invited others to give lectures on themes in philosophy, religion and letters. The school, considered one of the first formal adult education centers in America, was also attended by foreign scholars. It continued for nine years.
In April 1882, Alcott's friend and benefactor Ralph Waldo Emerson was sick and bedridden. After visiting him, Alcott wrote, "Concord will be shorn of its human splendor when he withdraws behind the cloud." Emerson died the next day.
As he was bedridden at the end of his life, Alcott's daughter Louisa May came to visit him at Louisburg on March 1, 1888. He said to her, "I am going up. Come with me." She responded, "I wish I could." He died three days later on March 4; Louisa May died only two days after her father.
The most detailed discussion of his theories on education is in an essay, "Observations on the Principles and Methods of Infant Instruction". Alcott believed that early education must draw out "unpremeditated thoughts and feelings of the child" and emphasized that infancy should primarily focus on enjoyment. He noted that learning was not about the acquisition of facts but the development of a reflective state of mind.
Alcott's ideas as an educator were controversial. Writer Harriet Martineau
, for example, wrote dubiously that, "the master presupposes his little pupils possessed of all truth; and that his business is to bring it out into expression". Even so, his ideas helped to found one of the first adult education centers in America, and provided the foundation for future generations of liberal education. Many of Alcott's educational principles are still used in classrooms today, including "teach by encouragement", art education, music education, acting exercises, learning through experience, risk-taking in the classroom, tolerance in schools, physical education/recess, and early childhood education. The teachings of William Ellery Channing a few years earlier had also laid the groundwork for the work of most of the Concord Transcendentalists.
The Concord School of Philosophy, which closed following Alcott's death in 1888, was reopened almost 90 years later in the 1970s. It has continued functioning with a Summer Conversational Series in its original building at Orchard House, now run by the Louisa May Alcott Memorial Association.
While many of Alcott's ideas continue to be perceived as being on the liberal/radical edge, they are still common themes in society, including vegetarian/veganism
, sustainable living, and temperance/self-control. Alcott described his sustenance as a "Pythagorean diet": meat, eggs, butter, cheese, and milk were excluded and drinking was confined to well water. Alcott believed that diet held the key to human perfection and connected physical well-being to mental improvement. He further viewed a perfection of nature to the spirit and, in a sense, predicted modern environmentalism
by condemning pollution
and encouraging humankind's role in sustaining ecology.
, German mysticism
, and Immanuel Kant
as filtered through the writings of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
. Margaret Fuller referred to Alcott as "a philosopher of the balmy times of ancient Greece
—a man whom the worldlings of Boston hold in as much horror as the worldlings of Athens held Socrates
." In his later years, Alcott related a story from his boyhood: during a total solar eclipse
, he threw rocks at the sky until he fell and dislocated his shoulder. He reflected that the event was a prophecy that he would be "tilting at the sun and always catching the fall."
Like Emerson, Alcott was always optimistic, idealistic, and individualistic in thinking. Writer James Russell Lowell
referred to Alcott in his poem "Studies for Two Heads" as "an angel with clipped wings". Even so, Emerson noted that Alcott's brilliant conversational ability did not translate into good writing. "When he sits down to write," Emerson wrote, "all his genius leaves him; he gives you the shells and throws away the kernel of his thought." His "Orphic Sayings", published in The Dial, became famous for their hilarity as dense, pretentious, and meaningless. In New York, for example, The Knickerbocker
published a parody titled "Gastric Sayings" in November 1840. A writer for the Boston Post referred to Alcott's "Orphic Sayings" as "a train of fifteen railroad cars with one passenger."
Modern critics often fault Alcott for not being able to financially support his family. Alcott himself worried about his own prospects as a young man, once writing to his mother that he was "still at my old trade—hoping." Alcott held his principles above his well-being. Shortly before his marriage, for example, his future father-in-law Colonel Joseph May helped him find a job teaching at a school in Boston run by the Society of Free Enquirers, followers of Robert Owen
, for a lucrative $1,000 to $1,200 annual salary. He refused it because he did not agree with their beliefs, writing, "I shall have nothing to do with them."
From the other perspective, Alcott's unique teaching ideas created an environment which produced two famous daughters in different fields, in a time when women were not commonly encouraged to have independent careers.
Veganism
Veganism is the practice of eliminating the use of animal products. Ethical vegans reject the commodity status of animals and the use of animal products for any purpose, while dietary vegans or strict vegetarians eliminate them from their diet only...
diet before the term was coined. He was also an abolitionist
Abolitionism
Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery.In western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. At the behest of Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas who was shocked at the treatment of natives in the New World, Spain enacted the first...
and an advocate for women's rights.
Born in Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
in 1799, Alcott had only minimal formal schooling before attempting a career as a traveling salesman. Worried about how the itinerant life might negatively impact his soul, he turned to teaching. His innovative methods, however, were controversial, and he rarely stayed in one place very long. His most well-known teaching position was at the Temple School
Temple School, Boston (1830s)
The Temple School in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, was established by Bronson Alcott in 1834, and featured a teaching style based on conversation. Teachers working at the school included Elizabeth Peabody and Margaret Fuller.-History:...
in Boston. His experience there was turned into two books: Records of a School and Conversations with Children on the Gospels. Alcott became friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...
and became a major figure in transcendentalism
Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that developed in the 1830s and 1840s in the New England region of the United States as a protest against the general state of culture and society, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard University and the doctrine of the Unitarian...
. His writings on behalf of that movement, however, are heavily criticized for being incoherent. Based on his ideas for human perfection, Alcott founded Fruitlands
Fruitlands (transcendental center)
Fruitlands was a Utopian agrarian commune established in Harvard, Massachusetts by Amos Bronson Alcott and Charles Lane in the 1840s, based on Transcendentalist principles...
, a transcendentalist experiment in community living. The project was short-lived and failed after seven months. Alcott continued to struggle financially for most of his life. Nevertheless, he continued focusing on educational projects and opened a new school at the end of his life in 1879. He died in 1888.
Alcott married Abby May
Abby May
Abigail "Abby" Alcott was the wife of Transcendentalist Amos Bronson Alcott and mother of four daughters, including Civil War novelist Louisa May Alcott...
in 1830 and they eventually had four surviving children, all daughters. Their second was Louisa May
Louisa May Alcott
Louisa May Alcott was an American novelist. She is best known for the novel Little Women and its sequels Little Men and Jo's Boys. Little Women was set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House in Concord, Massachusetts, and published in 1868...
, who fictionalized her experience with the family in her novel Little Women
Little Women
Little Women is a novel by American author Louisa May Alcott . The book was written and set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House, in Concord, Massachusetts. It was published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869...
in 1868. Alcott is often criticized for his inability to earn a living and support his family; he often relied on loans from his brother-in-law, Emerson, and others. He was never financially secure until his daughter became a best-selling novelist.
Early life
A native New EnglandNew England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
er, Amos Bronson Alcott was born in Wolcott, Connecticut
Wolcott, Connecticut
Wolcott is a town in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 15,215 at the 2000 census.Wolcott was founded in 1796 and was originally named Farmingbury...
(only recently renamed from "Farmingbury") on November 29, 1799. His parents were Joseph Chatfield Alcott and Anna Alcott (née Bronson). The family home was in an area known as Spindle Hill, and his father, Joseph Alcox, traced his ancestry to colonial-era settlers in eastern Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
. The family originally spelled their name "Alcock", later changed to "Alcocke" then "Alcox". Amos Bronson, the oldest of eight children, later changed the spelling to "Alcott" and dropped his first name.
At age six, young Bronson began his formal education in a one-room schoolhouse in the center of town but learned how to read at home with the help of his mother. The school taught only reading, writing, and spelling and he left this school at the age of 10. At age 13, his uncle, Reverend Tillotson Bronson, invited to take him into his home in Cheshire, Connecticut
Cheshire, Connecticut
Cheshire is a town in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 28,543 at the 2000 census. The center of population of Connecticut is located in Cheshire. In 2009 Cheshire was ranked 72 in Money Magazine's 100 Best Places to Live.Likewise, in 2011 Cheshire was ranked 73 in...
to be educated and prepared for college. Bronson gave it up after only a month and was self-educated from then on. He was not particularly social and his only close friend was his neighbor and second cousin William Alcott
William Alcott
William Andrus Alcott was an American educator, educational reformer, physician, and author of 108 books. His works, which include a wide range of topics including educational reform, physical education, school house design, family life, and diet, are still widely cited today.-Early life and...
, with whom he shared books and ideas. Bronson Alcott later reflected on his childhood at Spindle Hill: "It kept me pure... I dwelt amidst the hills... God spoke to me while I walked the fields." Starting at age 15, he took a job working for clockmaker Seth Thomas
Seth Thomas (clockmaker)
Seth Thomas was an American clock maker and a pioneer of mass production at his Seth Thomas Clock Company.-Biography:Thomas was born in Wolcott, Connecticut, in 1785. He started in the clock business in 1807, working for clockmaker Eli Terry...
in the nearby town of Plymouth
Plymouth, Connecticut
Plymouth is a town in Litchfield County, Connecticut, United States. It is named after Plymouth, Devon, England. The population was 11,634 at the 2000 census. The Town of Plymouth includes the villages of Terryville and Pequabuck.-Geography:...
.
At age 17, Alcott passed the exam for a teaching certificate but had trouble finding work as a teacher. Instead, he left home and became a traveling salesman in the American South
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
, peddling books and merchandise. He hoped the job would earn him enough money to support his parents, "to make their cares, and burdens less... and get them free from debt", though he soon spent most of his earnings on a new suit. At first, he thought it an acceptable occupation but soon worried about his spiritual well-being. In March 1823, Alcott wrote to his brother: "Peddling is a hard place to serve God, but a capital one to serve Mammon
Mammon
Mammon is a term, derived from the Christian Bible, used to describe material wealth or greed, most often personified as a deity, and sometimes included in the seven princes of Hell.-Etymology:...
." Near the end of his life, he fictionalized this experience in his book New Connecticut, originally circulated only among friends before its publication in 1881.
Early career and marriage
By the summer of 1823, Alcott returned to Connecticut in debt to his father, who bailed him out after his last two unsuccessful sales trips. He took a job as a schoolteacher in Cheshire with the help of his Uncle Tillotson. He quickly set about reforming the school. He added backs to the benches on which students sat, improved lighting and heating, de-emphasized rote learningRote learning
Rote learning is a learning technique which focuses on memorization. The major practice involved in rote learning is learning by repetition by which students commit information to memory in a highly structured way. The idea is that one will be able to quickly recall the meaning of the material the...
, and provided individual slates
Slate (writing)
A writing slate is a piece of flat material used as a medium for writing.In the 19th century, writing slates were made of slate, which is more durable than paper and was cheap at the time when paper was expensive. It was used to allow children to practice writing...
to each student — paid for by himself. Alcott had been influenced by educational philosophy of the Swiss
Swiss (people)
The Swiss are citizens or natives of Switzerland. The demonym derives from the toponym of Schwyz and has been in widespread use to refer to the Old Swiss Confederacy since the 16th century....
pedagogue Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi was a Swiss pedagogue and educational reformer who exemplified Romanticism in his approach....
and even re-named his school "The Cheshire Pestalozzi School". His style attracted the attention of Samuel Joseph May
Samuel Joseph May
Samuel Joseph May a radical American reformer during the nineteenth century, championed multiple reform movements including education, women’s rights, and abolitionism. He was born on September 12, 1797 in an upper class Boston area...
, who introduced Alcott to his sister Abby May
Abby May
Abigail "Abby" Alcott was the wife of Transcendentalist Amos Bronson Alcott and mother of four daughters, including Civil War novelist Louisa May Alcott...
. She called him, "an intelligent, philosophic, modest man" and found his views on education "very attractive". Locals in Cheshire were less supportive and became suspicious of his methods. Many students left and were enrolled in the local common school or a recently re-opened private school for boys. On November 6, 1827, Alcott started teaching in Bristol, Connecticut
Bristol, Connecticut
Bristol is a suburban city located in Hartford County, Connecticut, United States southwest of Hartford. According to 2006 Census Bureau estimates, the population of the city is 61,353. Bristol is primarily known as the home of ESPN, whose central studios are in the city. Bristol is also home to...
, still using the same methods he used in Cheshire, but opposition from the community surfaced quickly; he was unemployed by March 1828. He moved to Boston on April 24, 1828, and was immediately impressed, referring to the city as a place "where the light of the sun of righteousness has risen." He opened the Salem Street Infant School two months later on June 23. Abby May applied as his teaching assistant; instead, the couple were engaged, without consent of the family. They were married at King's Chapel
King's Chapel
King's Chapel is "an independent Christian unitarian congregation affiliated with the Unitarian Universalist Association" that is "unitarian Christian in theology, Anglican in worship, and congregational in governance." It is housed in what was formerly called "Stone Chapel", an 18th century...
on May 22, 1830; he was 30 years old and she was 29. Her brother conducted the ceremony and a modest reception followed at her father's house. After their marriage the Alcotts moved to 12 Franklin Street in Boston, a boarding house
Boarding house
A boarding house, is a house in which lodgers rent one or more rooms for one or more nights, and sometimes for extended periods of weeks, months and years. The common parts of the house are maintained, and some services, such as laundry and cleaning, may be supplied. They normally provide "bed...
run by a Mrs. Newall. Around this time, Alcott also first expressed his public disdain for slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
. In November 1830, he and William Lloyd Garrison
William Lloyd Garrison
William Lloyd Garrison was a prominent American abolitionist, journalist, and social reformer. He is best known as the editor of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, and as one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society, he promoted "immediate emancipation" of slaves in the United...
founded what he later called a "preliminary Anti-Slavery Society", though he differed from Garrison as a nonresistant
Nonresistance
Nonresistance is generally defined as "the practice or principle of not resisting authority, even when it is unjustly exercised". At its core is discouragement of, even opposition to, physical resistance to an enemy...
.
Attendance at Alcott's school was falling. A wealthy Quaker
Religious Society of Friends
The Religious Society of Friends, or Friends Church, is a Christian movement which stresses the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Members are known as Friends, or popularly as Quakers. It is made of independent organisations, which have split from one another due to doctrinal differences...
named Reuben Haines proposed he and educator William Russell start a new school in Pennsylvania. Alcott accepted and he and his newly-pregnant wife set forth on December 14. The school was established in Germantown
Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Germantown is a neighborhood in the northwest section of the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, about 7–8 miles northwest from the center of the city...
and the Alcotts were offered a rent-free home by Haines. Alcott and Russell were initially concerned that the area would not be conducive to their progressive approach to education and considered establishing the school in nearby Philadelphia instead. Unsuccessful, they went back to Germantown, though the rent-free home was no longer available and the Alcotts instead had to rent rooms in a boarding-house. It was there that their first child, a daughter they named Anna Bronson Alcott
Anna Alcott Pratt
Anna Bronson Alcott Pratt was the elder sister of American novelist Louisa May Alcott. She was the basis for the character Margaret "Meg" of Little Women , her sister's classic, semi-autobiographical novel...
, was born on March 16, 1831, after 36 hours of labor. By the fall of that year, their benefactor Haines died suddenly and the Alcotts again suffered financial difficulty. "We hardly earn the bread", wrote Abby may to her brother, "[and] the butter we have to think about."
The couple's only son was born on April 6, 1831, but lived only a few minutes. The mother recorded: "Gave birth to a fine boy full grown perfectly formed but not living". It was in Germantown that the couple's second daughter was born. Louisa May Alcott
Louisa May Alcott
Louisa May Alcott was an American novelist. She is best known for the novel Little Women and its sequels Little Men and Jo's Boys. Little Women was set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House in Concord, Massachusetts, and published in 1868...
was born on her father's birthday, November 29, 1832, at a half hour past midnight. Bronson described her as "a very fine healthful child, much more so than Anna was at birth." The Germantown school, however, was faltering; soon only eight pupils remained. Their benefactor Haines died before Louisa's birth. He had helped recruit students and even paid tuition for some of them. As Abby wrote, his death "has prostrated all our hopes here." On April 10, 1833, the family moved to Philadelphia, where Alcott ran a day school. As usual, Alcott's methods were controversial; a former student later referred to him as "the most eccentric man who ever took on himself to train and form the youthful mind." Alcott began to believe Boston was the best place for his ideas to flourish. He contacted theologian William Ellery Channing
William Ellery Channing
Dr. William Ellery Channing was the foremost Unitarian preacher in the United States in the early nineteenth century and, along with Andrews Norton, one of Unitarianism's leading theologians. He was known for his articulate and impassioned sermons and public speeches, and as a prominent thinker...
for support. Channing approved of Alcott's methods and promised to help find students to enroll, including his daughter Mary. Channing also secured aid from Justice Lemuel Shaw
Lemuel Shaw
Lemuel Shaw was an American jurist who served as Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court...
and Boston mayor Josiah Quincy, Jr.
Josiah Quincy, Jr.
Josiah Quincy, Jr. was mayor of Boston , as was his father Josiah Quincy III and grandson Josiah Quincy . He was the author of Figures in the Past . As a member of the Massachusetts State Legislature in 1837, he was instrumental in the establishment of the Massachusetts Board of Education...
Experimental educator
On September 22, 1834, Alcott opened a school of about 30 students, mostly from wealthy families. It was named the Temple SchoolTemple School, Boston (1830s)
The Temple School in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, was established by Bronson Alcott in 1834, and featured a teaching style based on conversation. Teachers working at the school included Elizabeth Peabody and Margaret Fuller.-History:...
because classes were held at the Masonic Temple
Masonic Temple
Masonic Temple is a term commonly used in Freemasonry with multiple but related meanings. It is used to describe an abstract spiritual goal, the conceptual ritualistic space formed when a Masonic Lodge meets, and the physical rooms and structures in which a Lodge meets...
on Tremont Street in Boston. His assistant was Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, later replaced by Margaret Fuller
Margaret Fuller
Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli, commonly known as Margaret Fuller, was an American journalist, critic, and women's rights advocate associated with the American transcendentalism movement. She was the first full-time American female book reviewer in journalism...
. Mary Peabody Mann served as a French instructor for a time. The school was briefly famous, and then infamous, because of his original methods. Before 1830, writing (except in higher education) equated to rote drills in the rules of grammar, spelling, vocabulary, penmanship and transcription of adult texts. However, in that decade, progressive reformers such as Alcott, influenced by Pestalozzi as well as Friedrich Fröbel and Johann Friedrich Herbart
Johann Friedrich Herbart
Johann Friedrich Herbart was a German philosopher, psychologist, and founder of pedagogy as an academic discipline....
, began to advocate writing about subjects from students' personal experiences. Reformers debated against beginning instruction with rules and were in favor of helping students learn to write by expressing the personal meaning of events within their own lives. Alcott's plan was to develop self-instruction on the basis of self-analysis, with an emphasis on conversation and questioning rather than lecturing and drill, which were prevalent in the U.S. classrooms of the time. Alongside writing and reading, he gave lessons in "spiritual culture", which included interpretation of the Gospel
Gospel
A gospel is an account, often written, that describes the life of Jesus of Nazareth. In a more general sense the term "gospel" may refer to the good news message of the New Testament. It is primarily used in reference to the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John...
s, and advocated object teaching in writing instruction. He even went so far as to decorate his schoolroom with visual elements he thought would inspire learning: paintings, books, comfortable furniture, and busts or portraits of Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
, Socrates
Socrates
Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...
, Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
, and William Ellery Channing.
During this time, the Alcotts had another child. Born on June 24, 1835, she was named Elizabeth Peabody Alcott
Elizabeth Sewall Alcott
Elizabeth Sewall "Lizzie" Alcott is the real-life model for the fictional character Beth March in Little Women, a novel written by her sister Louisa May Alcott...
in honor of the teaching assistant at the Temple School. By age three, however, her mother changed her name to Elizabeth Sewall Alcott, after her own mother.
In July 1835, Peabody published her account as an assistant to the Temple School as Record of a School: Exemplifying the General Principles of Spiritual Culture. While working on a second book, Alcott and Peabody had a falling out and Conversations with Children on the Gospels was prepared with help from Peabody's sister Sophia
Sophia Peabody
Sophia Amelia Peabody Hawthorne was a painter and illustrator as well as the wife of American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. She also published her journals and various articles.-Early life:...
, published at the end of December 1836. Alcott's methods were not well received; many found his conversations on the Gospels close to blasphemous. For example, he asked students to question if Biblical miracles were literal and suggested that all people are part of God. In the Boston Daily Advertiser
Boston Daily Advertiser
The Boston Daily Advertiser was the first daily newspaper in Boston, and for many years the only daily paper in Boston.-History:...
, Nathan Hale
Nathan Hale (journalist)
Nathan Hale was an American journalist and newspaper publisher who introduced regular editorial comment as a newspaper feature.-Life and career:...
criticized Alcott's "flippant and off hand conversation" about serious topics from the Virgin birth of Jesus to circumcision
Circumcision
Male circumcision is the surgical removal of some or all of the foreskin from the penis. The word "circumcision" comes from Latin and ....
. Joseph T. Buckingham
Joseph T. Buckingham
Joseph Tinker Buckingham was a journalist and politician in New England. He rose from humble beginnings to become an influential conservative intellectual in Boston.-Family and early life:...
called Alcott "either insane or half-witted" and "an ignorant and presuming charlatan
Charlatan
A charlatan is a person practicing quackery or some similar confidence trick in order to obtain money, fame or other advantages via some form of pretense or deception....
". The book did not sell well; a Boston lawyer bought 750 copies to use as waste paper.
The temple school was widely denounced in the press. Reverend James Freeman Clarke
James Freeman Clarke
James Freeman Clarke , an American theologian and author.-Biography:Born in Hanover, New Hampshire, James Freeman Clarke attended the Boston Latin School, graduated from Harvard College in 1829, and Harvard Divinity School in 1833...
was one of Alcott's few supporters and defended him against the harsh response from Boston periodicals. Alcott was rejected by most public opinion and, by the summer of 1837, he had only 11 students left and no assistant after Margaret Fuller moved to Providence, Rhode Island
Providence, Rhode Island
Providence is the capital and most populous city of Rhode Island and was one of the first cities established in the United States. Located in Providence County, it is the third largest city in the New England region...
. The controversy had caused many parents to remove their children and, as the school closed, Alcott became increasingly financially desperate. Remaining steadfast to his pedagogy, a forerunner of progressive and democratic school
Democratic school
This is a comprehensive list of current and former democratic schools. Most of these were modeled on the Summerhill School, the oldest existing democratic school founded in 1921...
ing, he alienated parents in a later "parlor school" by admitting an African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
child to the class, whom he then refused to expel in the face of protests.
Transcendentalism
Beginning in 1836, Alcott's membership in the Transcendental ClubTranscendental Club
The Transcendental Club was a group of New England intellectuals of the early-to-mid-19th century which gave rise to Transcendentalism.-Overview:...
put him in such company as Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...
, Orestes Brownson
Orestes Brownson
Orestes Augustus Brownson was a New England intellectual and activist, preacher, labor organizer, and noted Catholic convert and writer...
and Theodore Parker
Theodore Parker
Theodore Parker was an American Transcendentalist and reforming minister of the Unitarian church...
. He became a member with the Club's second meeting and hosted their third. A biographer of Emerson described the group as "the occasional meetings of a changing body of liberal thinkers, agreeing in nothing but their liberality". Frederick Henry Hedge
Frederick Henry Hedge
Frederick Henry Hedge was a New England Unitarian minister and Transcendentalist. He was a founder of the Transcendental Club, originally called Hedge's Club, and active in the development of Transcendentalism.-Biography:...
wrote of the group's nature: "There was no club in the strict sense... only occasional meetings of like-minded men and women". Alcott preferred the term "Symposium" for their group.
In late April 1840 Alcott moved to the town of Concord
Concord, Massachusetts
Concord is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the town population was 17,668. Although a small town, Concord is noted for its leading roles in American history and literature.-History:...
urged by Emerson. He rented a home for $50 a year within walking distance of Emerson's house
Ralph Waldo Emerson House
The Ralph Waldo Emerson House is a house museum located at 28 Cambridge Turnpike, Concord, Massachusetts, and a National Historic Landmark for its associations with American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. The museum is open mid-April to mid-October; an admission fee is charged.-History:The house...
; he named it Dove Cottage, though they also called it Concordia Cottage. A supporter of Alcott's philosophies, Emerson offered to help with his writing, which proved a difficult task. After several revisions, for example, he deemed the essay "Psyche" (Alcott's account of how he educated his daughters) unpublishable. Alcott also wrote a series patterned after the work of German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...
which were eventually published in the Transcendentalists' journal, The Dial
The Dial
The Dial was an American magazine published intermittently from 1840 to 1929. In its first form, from 1840 to 1844, it served as the chief publication of the Transcendentalists. In the 1880s it was revived as a political magazine...
. Emerson wrote to Margaret Fuller, then editor, that they might "pass muster & even pass for just & great". He was wrong. Alcott's so-called "Orphic
Orphism (religion)
Orphism is the name given to a set of religious beliefs and practices in the ancient Greek and the Hellenistic world, as well as by the Thracians, associated with literature ascribed to the mythical poet Orpheus, who descended into Hades and returned...
Sayings" were widely mocked for being silly and unintelligible; Fuller herself disliked them but did not want to hurt Alcott's feelings. In the first issue, for example, he wrote:
On July 26, 1840, Abby May gave birth again. Originally referred to as Baby for several months, she was eventually named Abby May after her mother. As a teenager, she changed the spelling of her name to "Abbie" before choosing to use only "May".
With financial support from Emerson, Alcott left Concord on May 8, 1842, to a visit to England, leaving his brother Junius with his family. He met two admirers, Charles Lane
Charles Lane (transcendentalist)
Charles Lane was an English-American transcendentalist, abolitionist, and early voluntaryist. Along with Amos Bronson Alcott, he was one of the main founders of Fruitlands.-Fruitlands:...
and Henry C. Wright. The two men were leaders of Alcott House
Alcott House
Alcott House, in Ham, Surrey , was the home of a utopian spiritual community and progressive school which lasted from 1838 to 1848.-History and Ideology:...
, an experimental school based on Alcott's methods from the Temple School located about ten miles outside of London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. The school's founder, James Pierpont Greaves, had only recently died but Alcott was invited to stay there for a week. Alcott persuaded them to come come to the United States with him; Lane and his son moved into the Alcott house and helped with family chores. Persuaded in part by Lane's abolitionist views
Abolitionism
Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery.In western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. At the behest of Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas who was shocked at the treatment of natives in the New World, Spain enacted the first...
, Alcott took a stand against the John Tyler
John Tyler
John Tyler was the tenth President of the United States . A native of Virginia, Tyler served as a state legislator, governor, U.S. representative, and U.S. senator before being elected Vice President . He was the first to succeed to the office of President following the death of a predecessor...
administration's plan to annex Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
as a slave territory and refused to pay
Tax resistance
Tax resistance is the refusal to pay tax because of opposition to the government that is imposing the tax or to government policy.Tax resistance is a form of civil disobedience and direct action...
his poll tax
Poll tax
A poll tax is a tax of a portioned, fixed amount per individual in accordance with the census . When a corvée is commuted for cash payment, in effect it becomes a poll tax...
. Abby May wrote in her journal on January 17, 1843, "A day of some excitement, as Mr. Alcott refused to pay his town tax... After waiting some time to be committed [to jail], he was told it was paid by a friend. Thus we were spared the affliction of his absence and the triumph of suffering for his principles." The annual poll tax was only $1.50. The incident inspired Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...
, whose similar protest led to a night in jail and his essay "Civil Disobedience
Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)
Civil Disobedience is an essay by American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau that was first published in 1849...
". Around this time, the Alcott family set up a sort of domestic post office
Post office
A post office is a facility forming part of a postal system for the posting, receipt, sorting, handling, transmission or delivery of mail.Post offices offer mail-related services such as post office boxes, postage and packaging supplies...
to curb potential domestic tension. Abby May described her idea: "I thought it would afford a daily opportunity for the children, indeed all of us, to interchange thought and sentiment".
Fruitlands
Lane and Alcott collaborated on a major expansion of their educational theories into a UtopiaUtopia
Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...
n society. Alcott, however, was still in debt and could not purchase the land needed for their planned community. In a letter, Lane wrote, "I do not see anyone to act the money part but myself." In May 1843, he purchased a 90 acres (364,217.4 m²) farm in Harvard, Massachusetts
Harvard, Massachusetts
Harvard is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. A farming community settled in 1658 and incorporated in 1732, it has been home to several non-traditional communities, such as Harvard Shaker Village and the utopian Transcendentalist center Fruitlands...
. Up front, he paid $1,500 of the total $1,800 value of the property; the rest was meant to be paid by the Alcotts over a two year period. They moved to the farm on June 1 and optimistically named it "Fruitlands" despite only ten old apple trees on the property. In July, Alcott announced their plans in The Dial: "We have made an arrangement with the proprieter of an estate of about a hundred acres, which liberates this tract from human ownership".
Their goal was to regain access to Eden
Garden of Eden
The Garden of Eden is in the Bible's Book of Genesis as being the place where the first man, Adam, and his wife, Eve, lived after they were created by God. Literally, the Bible speaks about a garden in Eden...
by finding the correct formula for perfect living, following specific rules governing agriculture, diet, and reproduction. In order to achieve this, they removed themselves from the economy as much as possible and lived independently; unlike a similar project named Brook Farm
Brook Farm
Brook Farm, also called the Brook Farm Institute of Agriculture and Education or the Brook Farm Association for Industry and Education, was a utopian experiment in communal living in the United States in the 1840s...
, the participants at Fruitlands avoided interaction with local communities. Calling themselves a "consociate family", they agreed to follow a strict vegetarian diet and to till the land without the use of animal labor. After some difficulty, they relented and allowed some cattle to be "enslaved". They also banned coffee, tea, alcoholic drinks, milk, and warm bathwater. They only ate "aspiring vegetables" — those which grew upward — and refused those that grew downward like potatoes. As Alcott had published earlier, "Our wine is water, — flesh, bread; — drugs, fruits." For clothing, they prohibited leather because animals were killed for it, as well as cotton, silk, and wool, because they were products of slave labor. Alcott had high expectations but was often away when the community most needed him as he attempted to recruit more members.
The experimental community was never successful, partly because most of the land was not arable
Arable land
In geography and agriculture, arable land is land that can be used for growing crops. It includes all land under temporary crops , temporary meadows for mowing or pasture, land under market and kitchen gardens and land temporarily fallow...
. Alcott lamented, "None of us were prepared to actualize practically the ideal life of which we dreamed. So we fell apart". Its founders were often away as well; in the middle of harvesting, they left for a lecture tour through Providence, Rhode Island
Providence, Rhode Island
Providence is the capital and most populous city of Rhode Island and was one of the first cities established in the United States. Located in Providence County, it is the third largest city in the New England region...
, New York City, and New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven is the second-largest city in Connecticut and the sixth-largest in New England. According to the 2010 Census, New Haven's population increased by 5.0% between 2000 and 2010, a rate higher than that of the State of Connecticut, and higher than that of the state's five largest cities, and...
. In its seven months, only 13 people joined, included the Alcotts and Lanes. Other than Abby May and her daughters, only one other woman joined, Ann Page. One rumor is that Page was asked to leave after eating a fish tail with a neighbor. Lane believed Alcott had misled him into thinking enough people would join the enterprise and developed a strong dislike for the nuclear family
Nuclear family
Nuclear family is a term used to define a family group consisting of a father and mother and their children. This is in contrast to the smaller single-parent family, and to the larger extended family. Nuclear families typically center on a married couple, but not always; the nuclear family may have...
. He quit the project and moved to a nearby Shaker
Shakers
The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, known as the Shakers, is a religious sect originally thought to be a development of the Religious Society of Friends...
family with his son. After Lane's departure, Alcott fell into a depression and could not speak or eat for three days. Abby May thought Lane purposely sabotaged her family. She wrote to her brother, "All Mr. Lane's efforts have been to disunite us. But Mr. Alcott's... paternal instincts were too strong for him." When the final payment on the farm was owed, Sam May refused to cover his brother-in-law's debts, as he often did, possibly at Abby May's suggestion. The experiment failed, the Alcotts had to leave Fruitlands.
The members of the Alcott family were not happy with their Fruitlands experience. At one point, Abby May threatened that she and their daughters would move elsewhere, leaving Bronson behind. Louisa May Alcott, who was ten years old at the time, later wrote of the experience in Transcendental Wild Oats (1873): "The band of brothers began by spading garden and field; but a few days of it lessened their ardor amazingly."
Return to Concord
The Wayside
The Wayside is a historic house in Concord, Massachusetts. The earliest part of the home may date to 1717. Later, it successively became the home of the young Louisa May Alcott and her family, author Nathaniel Hawthorne and his family, and children's literature writer Margaret Sidney...
" by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer.Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in the city of Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, a judge during the Salem Witch Trials...
). Both Emerson and Sam May assisted in securing the home for the Alcotts. While living in the home, Louisa began writing in earnest and was given her own room. She later said her years at the home "were the happiest years" of her life; many of the incidents in her novel Little Women
Little Women
Little Women is a novel by American author Louisa May Alcott . The book was written and set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House, in Concord, Massachusetts. It was published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869...
(1868) are based on this period. Alcott renovated the property, moving a barn and painting the home a rusty olive color, as well as tending to over six acres of land. On May 23, 1845, Abby May was granted a sum from her father's estate which was put into a trust fund, granting minor financial security. That summer, Bronson Alcott let Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...
borrow his ax to prepare his home at Walden Pond
Walden Pond
Walden Pond is a 31-metre-deep lake in Massachusetts . It is in area and around, located in Concord, Massachusetts, in the United States...
.
The Alcotts hosted a steady stream of visitors at The Hillside, including fugitive slaves, which they hosted in secret as a station of the Underground Railroad
Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad was an informal network of secret routes and safe houses used by 19th-century black slaves in the United States to escape to free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause. The term is also applied to the abolitionists,...
. Alcott's opposition to slavery also fueled his opposition to the Mexican–American War
Mexican–American War
The Mexican–American War, also known as the First American Intervention, the Mexican War, or the U.S.–Mexican War, was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848 in the wake of the 1845 U.S...
which began in 1846. He considered the war a blatant attempt to extend slavery and asked if the country was made up of "a people bent on conquest, on getting the golden treasures of Mexico into our hands, and of subjugating foreign peoples?"
In 1848, Abby May insisted they leave Concord, which she called "cold, heartless, brainless, soulless". The Alcott family put The Hillside up for rent and moved to Boston. There, next door to Peabody's book store on West Street, Bronson Alcott hosted a series based on the "Conversations" model by Margaret Fuller called "A Course on the Conversations on Man — his History, Resources, and Expectations". Participants, both men and women, were charged three dollars to attend or five dollars for all seven lectures. In March 1853, Alcott was invited to teach fifteen students at Harvard Divinity School
Harvard Divinity School
Harvard Divinity School is one of the constituent schools of Harvard University, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States. The School's mission is to train and educate its students either in the academic study of religion, or for the practice of a religious ministry or other public...
in an extracurricular, non-credit course.
Alcott and his family moved back to Concord after 1857, where he and his family lived in the Orchard House
Orchard House
Orchard House is an historic house museum in Concord, Massachusetts. It was the longtime home of Amos Bronson Alcott and family, including his daughter Louisa May Alcott who wrote and set her beloved novel Little Women there.-History:...
until 1877. In 1860, Alcott was named superintendent of Concord Schools.
Civil War years and beyond
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
and the Republican candidates generally — the first vote I ever cast for a President and State officers." Alcott was an abolitionist and a friend of the more radical William Lloyd Garrison. He had attended a rally led by Wendell Phillips
Wendell Phillips
Wendell Phillips was an American abolitionist, advocate for Native Americans, and orator. He was an exceptional orator and agitator, advocate and lawyer, writer and debater.-Education:...
on behalf of 17-year old Thomas Sims
Thomas Sims
Thomas Sims was an enslaved African American who escaped from slavery in Georgia at age 17 and lived for a time in Boston, Massachusetts. He was arrested there under the federal Fugitive Slave Law on April 4, 1851. Following a dramatic court trial, he was returned to his owner against the strong...
, a fugitive slave on trial in Boston. Alcott was one of several who attempted to storm the courthouse; when gunshots were heard, he was the only one who stood his ground, though the effort was unsuccessful. He had also stood his ground in a protest against the trial of Anthony Burns
Anthony Burns
Anthony Burns was born a slave in Stafford County, Virginia. As a young man, he became a Baptist and a "slave preacher"...
. A group had broken down the door of the Boston courthouse but guards beat them back. Alcott stood forward and asked the leader of the group, Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Thomas Wentworth Higginson was an American Unitarian minister, author, abolitionist, and soldier. He was active in the American Abolitionism movement during the 1840s and 1850s, identifying himself with disunion and militant abolitionism...
, "Why are we not within?" He then walked calmly into the courthouse, was threatened with a gun, and turned back, "but without hastening a step", according to Higginson.
In 1862, Louisa moved to Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
to volunteer as a nurse. On January 14, 1863, the Alcotts received a telegram that Louisa was sick; Bronson immediately went to bring her home, briefly meeting Abraham Lincoln while there. Louisa turned her experience into the book Hospital Sketches
Hospital Sketches
Hospital Sketches is a compilation of four sketches based on letters Louisa May Alcott sent home during the six weeks she spent as a volunteer nurse for the Union Army during the American Civil War in Georgetown.-Summary:...
. Her father wrote of it, "I see nothing in the way of a good appreciation of Louisa's merits as a woman and a writer."
Henry David Thoreau died on May 6, 1862, likely from an illness he caught from Alcott two years earlier. Alcott assisted in arranging Thoreau's funeral in the church he had resigned, at Emerson's request. Only two years later, neighbor Nathaniel Hawthorne died as well. Alcott served as a pallbearer along with Louis Agassiz
Louis Agassiz
Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz was a Swiss paleontologist, glaciologist, geologist and a prominent innovator in the study of the Earth's natural history. He grew up in Switzerland and became a professor of natural history at University of Neuchâtel...
, James Thomas Fields
James Thomas Fields
James Thomas Fields was an American publisher, editor, and poet.-Early life and family:He was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on December 31, 1817 and named James Field; the family later added the "s". His father was a sea captain and died before Fields was three...
, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. was an American physician, professor, lecturer, and author. Regarded by his peers as one of the best writers of the 19th century, he is considered a member of the Fireside Poets. His most famous prose works are the "Breakfast-Table" series, which began with The Autocrat...
, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline...
, and others. With Hawthore's death, Alcott worried that few of the Concord notables remained. He recorded in his journal: "Fair figures one by one are fading from sight." The next year, Lincoln was assassinated, which Alcott called "appalling news".
In 1868, Alcott met with publisher Thomas Niles, an admirer of Hospital Sketches. Alcott asked Niles if he would publish a book of short stories by his daughter; instead, he suggested she write a book about girls. Louisa May was not interested initially but agreed to try. "They want a book of 200 pages or more", Alcott told his daughter. The result was Little Women, published later that year. The book, which fictionalized the Alcott family during the girls' coming-of-age years, recast the father figure as a soldier, away from home while he fought in the Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
.
Alcott spoke, as opportunity arose, before the "lyceum
Lyceum
The lyceum is a category of educational institution defined within the education system of many countries, mainly in Europe. The definition varies between countries; usually it is a type of secondary school.-History:...
s" then common in various parts of the United States, or addressed groups of hearers as they invited him. These "conversations" as he called them, were more or less informal talks on a great range of topics, spiritual, aesthetic and practical, in which he emphasized the ideas of the school of American Transcendentalists led by Emerson, who was always his supporter and discreet admirer. He often discussed Platonic philosophy, the illumination of the mind and soul by direct communion with Spirit; upon the spiritual and poetic monitions of external nature; and upon the benefit to man of a serene mood and a simple way of life.
Final years
Alcott's published books, all from late in his life, include Tablets (1868), Concord Days (1872), New Connecticut (1881), and Sonnets and Canzonets (1882). Louisa May attended to her father's needs in his final years. She purchased a house for her sister Anna which had been the last home of Henry David Thoreau, now known as the Thoreau-Alcott HouseThoreau-Alcott House
The Thoreau-Alcott House is an historic house at 255 Main Street in Concord, Massachusetts that was home to the writers Henry David Thoreau and Louisa May Alcott at different times.-History:...
. Louisa and her parents moved in with Anna as well.
After the death of his wife Abby May on November 25, 1877, Alcott never returned to Orchard House, too heartbroken to live there. He and Louisa May collaborated on a memoir and went over her papers, letters, and journals. "My heart bleeds with the memories of those days", he wrote, "and even long years, of cheerless anxiety and hopeless dependence." Louisa noted her father had become "restless with his anchor gone." They gave up on the memoir project and Louisa burned many of her mother's papers.
On January 19, 1879, Alcott and Franklin Benjamin Sanborn
Franklin Benjamin Sanborn
Franklin Benjamin Sanborn was an American journalist, author, and reformer. Sanborn was a social scientist, and a memorialist of American transcendentalism who wrote early biographies of many of the movement's key figures...
wrote a prospectus for a new school which they distributed to potentially interested people throughout the country. The result was the Concord School of Philosophy
Concord School of Philosophy
The Concord School of Philosophy was a lyceum-like series of summer lectures and discussions of philosophy in Concord, Massachusetts from 1879 to 1888.-History:...
and Literature, which held its first session in 1879 in Alcott's study in the Orchard House
Orchard House
Orchard House is an historic house museum in Concord, Massachusetts. It was the longtime home of Amos Bronson Alcott and family, including his daughter Louisa May Alcott who wrote and set her beloved novel Little Women there.-History:...
. In 1880 the school moved to the Hillside Chapel, a building next to the house, where he held conversations and, over the course of successive summers, as he entered his eighties, invited others to give lectures on themes in philosophy, religion and letters. The school, considered one of the first formal adult education centers in America, was also attended by foreign scholars. It continued for nine years.
In April 1882, Alcott's friend and benefactor Ralph Waldo Emerson was sick and bedridden. After visiting him, Alcott wrote, "Concord will be shorn of its human splendor when he withdraws behind the cloud." Emerson died the next day.
As he was bedridden at the end of his life, Alcott's daughter Louisa May came to visit him at Louisburg on March 1, 1888. He said to her, "I am going up. Come with me." She responded, "I wish I could." He died three days later on March 4; Louisa May died only two days after her father.
Beliefs
Alcott was fundamentally and philosophically opposed to corporal punishment as a means of disciplining his students. Instead, beginning at the Temple School, he would appoint a daily student superintendent. When that student observed an infraction, he or she reported it to the rest of the class and, as a whole, they deliberated on punishment. At times, Alcott offered his own hand for an offending student to strike, saying that any failing was the teacher's responsibility. The shame and guilt this method induced, he believed, was far superior to the fear instilled by corporal punishment; when he used physical "correction" he required that the students be unanimously in support of its application, even including the student to be punished.The most detailed discussion of his theories on education is in an essay, "Observations on the Principles and Methods of Infant Instruction". Alcott believed that early education must draw out "unpremeditated thoughts and feelings of the child" and emphasized that infancy should primarily focus on enjoyment. He noted that learning was not about the acquisition of facts but the development of a reflective state of mind.
Alcott's ideas as an educator were controversial. Writer Harriet Martineau
Harriet Martineau
Harriet Martineau was an English social theorist and Whig writer, often cited as the first female sociologist....
, for example, wrote dubiously that, "the master presupposes his little pupils possessed of all truth; and that his business is to bring it out into expression". Even so, his ideas helped to found one of the first adult education centers in America, and provided the foundation for future generations of liberal education. Many of Alcott's educational principles are still used in classrooms today, including "teach by encouragement", art education, music education, acting exercises, learning through experience, risk-taking in the classroom, tolerance in schools, physical education/recess, and early childhood education. The teachings of William Ellery Channing a few years earlier had also laid the groundwork for the work of most of the Concord Transcendentalists.
The Concord School of Philosophy, which closed following Alcott's death in 1888, was reopened almost 90 years later in the 1970s. It has continued functioning with a Summer Conversational Series in its original building at Orchard House, now run by the Louisa May Alcott Memorial Association.
While many of Alcott's ideas continue to be perceived as being on the liberal/radical edge, they are still common themes in society, including vegetarian/veganism
Veganism
Veganism is the practice of eliminating the use of animal products. Ethical vegans reject the commodity status of animals and the use of animal products for any purpose, while dietary vegans or strict vegetarians eliminate them from their diet only...
, sustainable living, and temperance/self-control. Alcott described his sustenance as a "Pythagorean diet": meat, eggs, butter, cheese, and milk were excluded and drinking was confined to well water. Alcott believed that diet held the key to human perfection and connected physical well-being to mental improvement. He further viewed a perfection of nature to the spirit and, in a sense, predicted modern environmentalism
Environmentalism
Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements...
by condemning pollution
Pollution
Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into a natural environment that causes instability, disorder, harm or discomfort to the ecosystem i.e. physical systems or living organisms. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, heat or light...
and encouraging humankind's role in sustaining ecology.
Criticism
Alcott's philosophical teachings have been criticized as inconsistent, hazy or abrupt. He formulated no system of philosophy, and shows the influence of PlatoPlato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
, German mysticism
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
, and Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
as filtered through the writings of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
. Margaret Fuller referred to Alcott as "a philosopher of the balmy times of ancient Greece
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
—a man whom the worldlings of Boston hold in as much horror as the worldlings of Athens held Socrates
Socrates
Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...
." In his later years, Alcott related a story from his boyhood: during a total solar eclipse
Solar eclipse
As seen from the Earth, a solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between the Sun and the Earth, and the Moon fully or partially blocks the Sun as viewed from a location on Earth. This can happen only during a new moon, when the Sun and the Moon are in conjunction as seen from Earth. At least...
, he threw rocks at the sky until he fell and dislocated his shoulder. He reflected that the event was a prophecy that he would be "tilting at the sun and always catching the fall."
Like Emerson, Alcott was always optimistic, idealistic, and individualistic in thinking. Writer James Russell Lowell
James Russell Lowell
James Russell Lowell was an American Romantic poet, critic, editor, and diplomat. He is associated with the Fireside Poets, a group of New England writers who were among the first American poets who rivaled the popularity of British poets...
referred to Alcott in his poem "Studies for Two Heads" as "an angel with clipped wings". Even so, Emerson noted that Alcott's brilliant conversational ability did not translate into good writing. "When he sits down to write," Emerson wrote, "all his genius leaves him; he gives you the shells and throws away the kernel of his thought." His "Orphic Sayings", published in The Dial, became famous for their hilarity as dense, pretentious, and meaningless. In New York, for example, The Knickerbocker
The Knickerbocker
The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, was a literary magazine of New York City, founded by Charles Fenno Hoffman in 1833, and published until 1865 under various titles, including:...
published a parody titled "Gastric Sayings" in November 1840. A writer for the Boston Post referred to Alcott's "Orphic Sayings" as "a train of fifteen railroad cars with one passenger."
Modern critics often fault Alcott for not being able to financially support his family. Alcott himself worried about his own prospects as a young man, once writing to his mother that he was "still at my old trade—hoping." Alcott held his principles above his well-being. Shortly before his marriage, for example, his future father-in-law Colonel Joseph May helped him find a job teaching at a school in Boston run by the Society of Free Enquirers, followers of Robert Owen
Robert Owen
Robert Owen was a Welsh social reformer and one of the founders of utopian socialism and the cooperative movement.Owen's philosophy was based on three intellectual pillars:...
, for a lucrative $1,000 to $1,200 annual salary. He refused it because he did not agree with their beliefs, writing, "I shall have nothing to do with them."
From the other perspective, Alcott's unique teaching ideas created an environment which produced two famous daughters in different fields, in a time when women were not commonly encouraged to have independent careers.
Works
- Observations on the Principles and Methods of Infant Instruction (1830)
- Conversations with Children on the Gospels (Volume I, 1836)
- Conversations with Children on the Gospels (Volume II, 1837)
- Concord Days (1872)
- Table-talk (1877)
- New Connecticut. an Autobiographical Poem (1887; first edition privately printed in 1882)
- Sonnets and Canzonets (1882)
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Philosopher and Seer: An Estimate of His Character and Genius in Prose and Verse (1882)
- The journals of Bronson Alcott
Sources
- Baker, Carlos. Emerson Among the Eccentrics: A Group Portrait. New York: Viking Press, 1996: 217. ISBN 0-670-86675-X
- Bedell, Madelon. The Alcotts: Biography of a Family. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1980. ISBN 0-517-540312
- Dahlstrand, Frederick C. Amos Bronson Alcott: An Intellectual Biography. Rutherford: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1982.
- Felton, R. Todd. A Journey into the Transcendentalists' New England. Berkeley, California: Roaring Forties Press, 2006. ISBN 0-9766706-4-X
- Francis, Richard. Fruitlands: The Alcott Family and Their Search for Utopia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-300-14041-5
- Gura, Philip F. American Transcendentalism: A History. New York: Hill and Wang, 2007. ISBN 0-8090-3477-8
- Hankins, Barry. The Second Great Awakening and the Transcendentalists. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2004: 129. ISBN 0-313-31848-4
- Matteson, John. Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007. ISBN 978-0-393-33359-6
- Packer, Barbara L. The Transcendentalists. Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-8203-2958-1
- Reisen, Harriet. Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2009. ISBN 978-0-8050-8299-9
- Schreiner, Samuel A., Jr. The Concord Quartet: Alcott, Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, and the Friendship That Freed the American Mind. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2006. ISBN 978-0-471-64663-1
External links
- Amos Bronson Alcott Network
- Bronson Alcott at Alcott house, England, and Fruitlands, New England (1842-1844) (1908) by Franklin Benjamin SanbornFranklin Benjamin SanbornFranklin Benjamin Sanborn was an American journalist, author, and reformer. Sanborn was a social scientist, and a memorialist of American transcendentalism who wrote early biographies of many of the movement's key figures...
- Alcott biography on American Transcendentalism Web
- Alcott at Perspectives in American Literature
- Bronson Alcott: A glimpse at our vegetarian heritage, by Karen Iacobbo
- Guide to Books from the library of Amos Bronson Alcott at Houghton Library, Harvard University
- Guide to Amos Bronson Alcott papers at Houghton Library, Harvard University