Alcott, A. Bronson (Amos Bronson), 1799-1888

Variant names
Dates:
Birth 1799-11-29
Death 1888-03-04
Gender:
Male
Americans
English

Biographical notes:

Amos Bronson Alcott (November 29, 1799 – March 4, 1888) 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 plant-based diet. He was also an abolitionist and an advocate for women's rights.

Born in Wolcott, Connecticut in 1799, Alcott had only minimal formal schooling before attempting a career as a traveling salesman. Worried about how the itinerant life might have a negative impact on 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 failed after seven months. Alcott struggled 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'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 House. 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. Alcott himself moved out of Concord for his final years, settling at 10 Louisburg Square in Boston beginning in 1885.

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.

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Subjects:

  • American literature
  • American literature
  • Suffrage
  • Abolition
  • Authors, American
  • Authors, American
  • Authors, American
  • Authors, American
  • American poetry
  • Poets, American
  • Women authors, American
  • Autographs
  • Dialogues
  • Discipline of children
  • Educators
  • Manuscripts
  • Philosophers
  • Philosophers
  • Philosophers
  • Poetry
  • Sonnets, American
  • Transcendentalism (New England)
  • Transcendentalists (New England)
  • Transcendentalists (New England)
  • American literature
  • Authors, American
  • Authors, American
  • Authors, American
  • Philosophers
  • Philosophers
  • Transcendentalists (New England)

Occupations:

  • Authors
  • Collector
  • Educators
  • Philosophers
  • Transcendentalists
  • Transcendentalists (New England)

Places:

  • Concord, MA, US
  • Boston, MA, US
  • Connecticut, CT, US
  • Harvard, MA, US
  • Philadelphia, PA, US

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