American Bloomsbury by Susan Cheever

I'll just say it straight out, I loved American Bloomsbury by Susan Cheever published 2006.  What a marvelous group biography of Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau.  Some may ask why did the author choose these particular writers for a group biography? What connection do they have with each other?  You would be suprised.  I know I was. 

For starters all five writers, to a greater or lesser degree, were part of the transcendentalist movement.   Trancendentalism was a philosophy that began in New England in the 1830's, and as Susan Cheever explains:

The Concord group of transcendentalists was part of a wave of liberalism and a passion for freedom that seemed to be sweeping through the new United States. After decades of Puritan striving and dour farmers rising at dawn to tend to the necessities of crops and barns now nature was a friendly environment to be enjoyed. The world was shifting. It was time to kick up our heels ... Even the dour, handsome Nathaniel Hawthorne was not immune to this exuberant mood. “I want my place, my own place, my true place in the world,” he wrote; “I want my proper sphere, my thing.”

After discussing trancendentalism Cheever moves on to the major focus of her book detailing the lives of these brilliant American writers liiving near each other (in the case of the Alcotts and the Hawthornes right next door) in Concord, MA during the 1840's to the 1860's.  These writers also lived elsewhere at different points in their lives but they always returned to Concord.  The  exception tragically was Margaret Fuller who drowned in a shipwreck with her husband and infant son off the coast of Fire Island, New York.  Hawthorne and Emerson were deeply affected by Margaret's death. Thoreau and Louisa May Alcott were horrified as well and Susan Cheever's recounting of the shipwreck makes for powerful reading.

American Bloomsbury brings home throughout the book how connected the lives of Alcott, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Emerson and Fuller were.  The young Louisa May Alcott went on boat rides with Thoreau and Cheever tells us the character of Laurie in Little Women is based on him.  Hawthorne was quite taken with Margaret Fuller and she may have been the inspiration for Hester Prynne in The Scarlett Letter.  When Louisa May Alcott returned to Concord an invalid after working as a civil war nurse the Hawthornes and the Emersons went right to the Alcott's home asking how they could help.  That's understandable since Louisa had leant a helping hand caring for the Emerson and Hawthorne children when they were growing up.  

I don't want to reveal too much more because I want people to read American Bloomsbury for themselves and there is much more to discover.  I can't close though without saying a few words about Ralph Waldo Emerson. He was a wealthy man and a generous one.  He helped his friend Thoreau out financially throughout his life.  The Alcotts and the Hawthornes would eventually be able to live comfortably but for a long time they needed Emerson's help and he always gave it.  Suffice it to say without Emerson such American classics as Walden, Little Women and The Scarlet Letter might never have been written. 

I finished American Bloomsbury determined to read and in some cases reread the works of these classic American writers and I highly recommend American Bloomsbury, a fascinating and inspiring book of American cultural history.