|
Loading... American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret…by Susan Cheever
LibraryThing recommendationsMember recommendationsLoading...
won't like
will probably not like
will probably like
will like
will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.  MaowangVater | Aug 18, 2009 |  Several reviewers haven't thought much of this book, and I'd agree that the writing is rather pedestrian, but how cool that Hawthorne moped around after Margaret Fuller, she of the beautiful dark hair and the bold, free-thinking approach to life. How very like Hester Prynne. My students in junior English found the whole episode pretty intriguing since they usually assume anyone born in the dark ages of the nineteenth century to be prim, proper, and very well-behaved. (  ) CarmenOhio | Dec 29, 2008 | This amazing bunch of neighbors and authors have long held my personal interest and attention. Through their journals, novels and writings they have allowed their readers access to private thoughts and beliefs and I was excited to see someone had taken on the task of exploring them as a group. Susan Cheever's has done an excellent job and her honest affection and curiosity is evident from beginning to end. An importan part of American and literary history is conveyed in a readable, enjoyable manner. (  ) mcintoshcollege | Jan 23, 2008 | A rather ho-hum account of the community surrounding Emerson that included Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Hawthorne, and the Alcotts, with guest appearances by Melville, Whitman, and Franklin Pierce. It may be that Cheever just took on too much in trying to tackle all of these eminent writers in one book. She jumps from year to year, person to person, place to place. It's not difficult to keep focused, but the end result, for me, was a book that stayed on the surface. I really learned nothing I didn't already know--and I'm no expert in the transcendentalists. And I don't feel that I got a very good sense of time and place here either. (P.S. It's NOT a novel, as another reviewer called it.) (  )1  Cariola | Jan 19, 2008 | Great content, but not very well written. Rather confusing storytelling sequence. (  ) legan | Nov 26, 2007 |  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0743264614, Hardcover)Even the most devoted readers of nineteenth-century American literature often assume that the men and women behind the masterpieces were as dull and staid as the era's static daguerreotypes. Susan Cheever's latest work, however, brings new life to the well-known literary personages who produced such cherished works as The Scarlet Letter, Moby-Dick, Walden, and Little Women. Rendering in full color the tumultuous, often scandalous lives of these volatile and vulnerable geniuses, Cheever's dynamic narrative reminds us that, while these literary heroes now seem secure of their spots in the canon, they were once considered avant-garde, bohemian types, at odds with the establishment.These remarkable men and women were so improbably concentrated in placid Concord, Massachusetts, that Henry James referred to the town as the "biggest little place in America." Among the host of luminaries who floated in and out of Concord's "American Bloomsbury" as satellites of the venerable intellect and prodigious fortune of Ralph Waldo Emerson were Henry David Thoreau -- perpetual second to his mentor in both love and career; Louisa May Alcott -- dreamy girl and ambitious spinster; Nathaniel Hawthorne -- dilettante and cad; and Margaret Fuller -- glamorous editor and foreign correspondent. Perhaps inevitably, given the smallness of the place and the idiosyncrasies of its residents, the members of the prestigious circle became both intellectually and romantically entangled: Thoreau serenaded an infatuated Louisa on his flute. Vying with Hawthorne for Fuller's attention, Emerson wrote the fiery feminist love letters while she resided (yards away from his wife) in his guest room. Herman Melville was, according to some, ultimately driven mad by his consuming and unrequited affection for Hawthorne. Far from typically Victorian, this group of intellectuals, like their British Bloomsbury counterparts to whom the title refers, not only questioned established literary forms, but also resisted old moral and social strictures. Thoreau, of course, famously retreated to a plot of land on Walden Pond to escape capitalism, pick berries, and ponder nature. More shocking was the group's ambivalence toward the institution of marriage. Inclined to bend the rules of its bonds, many of its members spent time at the notorious commune, Brook Farm, and because liberal theories could not entirely guarantee against jealousy, the tension of real or imagined infidelities was always near the surface. Susan Cheever reacquaints us with the sexy, subversive side of Concord's nineteenth-century intellectuals, restoring in three dimensions the literary personalities whose work is at the heart of our national history and cultural identity. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:53 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
LibraryThing Member GiveawayAmerican Bloomsbury by Susan Cheever is available from LibraryThing Member Giveaway. Sign up to possibly get a copy in exchange for a review.
Abebooks |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The naturalist and Emerson’s sometime handyman Henry David Thoreau was already a resident of Concord. But Emerson made the necessary connections and put up the money to draw there the radical educators Margaret Fuller and Bronson Alcott and Alcott’s family. He charmed the aloof author Nathaniel Hawthorne away from Salem. He also arranged for members of his circle to meet New York authors like Walt Whitman and Herman Melville. It was quite an intellectual hot house, and Cheever spends the time to concentrate on the interactions and relationships between her central characters; it makes very lively reading. (