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    American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work
    American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work
    American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work
    Audiobook6 hours

    American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work

    Written by Susan Cheever

    Narrated by Kate Reading

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    A brilliant, controversial, and fascinating biography of those who were, in the mid-nineteenth century, the center of American thought and literature.

    Concord, Massachusetts, 1849. At various times, three houses on the same road were home to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry and John Thoreau, Bronson Alcott and his daughter Louisa May, Nathanial Hawthorne, and Margaret Fuller. Among their friends and neighbors: Henry James, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allen Poe, and others. These men and women are at the heart of American idealism.

    We may think of them as static daguerreotypes, but in fact, these men and women fell desperately in and out of love with each other, edited each other's work, discussed and debated ideas and theories all night long, and walked arm in arm under Concord's great elms-all of which creates a thrilling story.

    American Bloomsbury explores how, exactly, Concord developed into the first American community devoted to literature and original ideas-ideas that, to this day, define our beliefs about environmentalism and conservation, and about the glorious importance of the individual self.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateJan 15, 2007
    ISBN9781400173624
    Author

    Susan Cheever

    Susan Cheever is the bestselling author of thirteen previous books, including five novels and the memoirs Note Found in a Bottle and Home Before Dark. Her work has been nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the Boston Globe Winship Medal. She is a Guggenheim Fellow, a member of the Corporation of Yaddo, and a member of the Author's Guild Council. She teaches in the Bennington College M.F.A. program. She lives in New York City with her family.

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    Reviews for American Bloomsbury

    3.5/5

    159 ratings24 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Wonderful recreation of the life of the transcendentalists with all the colors of their lives, loves, and passions. Inspires me to return to Concord!
    • 5/5
      Re-reading this because I loved it and I wanted to hear it again. Bronson Alcott is still a complete narcissistic lunatic. He's lucky that his daughters turned out as well as they did.
    • 2/5
      I really wanted to like this book, but it's not a good book. Internally inconsistent, self-contradictory, full of slanted assumptions that go against the evidence (e.g., Hawthorne had a strong sexual side, as demonstrated by his large family--Hawthorne may well have had a strong sexual side, but three children hardly constituted a "large family" in that era and in that place).At times the writing became so wooly that I was hard-pressed to discern what point, if any, was being made. The best parts involve Louisa May Alcott and Henry David Thoreau. Here Cheever is a sympathetic but clear-eyed observer of actions long past. Two stars for the subject matter and a good bibliography.
    • 4/5
      Well researched book about a group of famous authors who all lived in the small town of Concord, MA in the 1800's. Some did not gain notoriety or recognition til they died.
    • 3/5
      I'm not a big biography reader, but this book was OK - kind of lightweight maybe but I guess it suited me. I enjoyed learning more about the Transcendentalists and Concord. Very short chapters and disjointed, but somehow that was fine with me.
    • 3/5
      Cheever's narrative style is fairly direct and clear, neither hagiographic nor skeptical.The book suffers from the defects of the multi-person-biography sub-genre, in that the threads of the story get tangled with jumping around from person to person and year to year, sometimes going backwards.The stories themselves were a fascinating view of the intermingled private lives of so many famous writers and others in a condensed time and place.In addition to the main characters, there are also appearances by Melville, Longfellow, Whitman, and the Brownings, as well as passing references to many other celebrities of the period, American and European.The most interesting incident to me was that Louisa May Alcott was pressured into writing "Little Women" by her publisher, and did not relish the assignment at all.I confess to having no knowledge of Margaret Fuller at all; her insinuation into the family relationships of the others is not featured in high school English classes.A good companion to "A Summer of Hummingbirds" by Christopher Benfrey, about the other major group of American celebrities of the 19th-century (Beechers, Dickinsons, and others).
    • 5/5
      Re-reading this because I loved it and I wanted to hear it again. Bronson Alcott is still a complete narcissistic lunatic. He's lucky that his daughters turned out as well as they did.
    • 5/5
      Great book for anyone who would like to learn a little bit more into the lives of Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne and Louisa May Alcott. Paints a wonderful picture of what their lives were like during that time period in American history.
    • 4/5
      Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne are enshrined in America's literary canon while Louisa May Alcott was the author of one of the most beloved novel for girls ever written. Susan Cheever's eminently readable book about the menage of famous authors and thinkers living in Concord, Massachusetts in the mid-19th Century strips away the reverence surrounding these people and gives us a "warts and all" picture of their lives, their writing and their political actsThe person who caused this group to all come together in this little town west of Boston was Emerson, who, by the fortunate early death of his wife, became a wealthy man, enabling him to finance the Hawthornes, the Alcotts and Thoreau who without him would surely have starved. The personal dynamics of this group makes for fascinating reading. There was the love triangle of Margaret Fuller (an early free-thinking feminist) and Emerson and Hawthorne. There was Bronson Alcott, an uneducated pontificator of dubious education and dietary philosophies and there was Thoreau living in his cabin (conveniently paid for by Emerson) expounding on living without money and with nature.For a short period of time their stars all shown brightly in the American literary firmament. Then it was over. Thoreau and Hawthorne had early deaths, Emerson sank into Alzheimer's disease, Hawthorne died with his career in serious decline and poor Louisa MAy Alcott - much like her doppelganger Jo March - supported her family with her writing.Their writing, rediscovered by a generation of young people in the 1960's lives on today. Ms. Cheever has given us a wonderful picture of the real people underneath the legends.
    • 4/5
      The time: mid 1800's
      The place: Concord, Massachusetts "biggest little place in America," (Henry James)

      Susan Cheever explores the intersecting personal lives of a group of friends, who we acknowledge as an extraordinary group of writers.
      The "Concord gang" would include literary residents such as Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Henry David Thoreau.

      The American Bloomsbury bears little resemblance to their Victorian "British Bloomsbury" counterparts.
      You'll find they are avant-garde bohemian types, often at odds with the existing moral and social structures.
      In such close proximity, they intertwine intellectually and romantically.

      "Ralph Waldo Emerson was the central and most influential figure among the group of radical thinkers and writers of the 1830s-1850s known as the New England Transcendentalists"
      His 1836 essay NATURE is usually considered the decisive moment at which transcendentalism became a major cultural movement.

      The audio presentation by Kate Reading brought to life the volatilities and passions of this "cluster of geniuses"
      If you have read their writings and have an interest in the era, you'll enjoy this read.

      (6 audio discs)
    • 4/5
      History that reads (almost) like a novel. What a pleasure.

      Petrea Burchard
      Camelot & Vine
    • 3/5
      InterestingBook DescriptionRelease date: September 18, 2007The 1850s were heady times in Concord, Massachusetts: in a town where a woman's petticoat drying on an outdoor line was enough to elicit scandal, some of the greatest minds of our nation's history were gathering in three of its wooden houses to establish a major American literary movement. The Transcendentalists, as these thinkers came to be called, challenged the norms of American society with essays, novels, and treatises whose beautifully rendered prose and groundbreaking assertions still resonate with readers today. Though noted contemporary author Susan Cheever stands in awe of the monumental achievements of such writers as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Louisa May Alcott, her personal, evocative narrative removes these figures from their dusty pedestals and provides a lively account of their longings, jealousies, and indiscretions. Thus, Cheever reminds us that the passion of Concord's ambitious and temperamental resident geniuses was by no means confined to the page....
    • 3/5
      I'm a fan of Thoreau, Hawthorn, and Emerson, and got a lot of exposure to Lousia May Alcott's work as a child, so American Bloomsbury was the sort of book that ties a lot of threads together for me. I'd never really understood just how closely entwined their lives were (or how closely Margaret Fuller's was), or put the timeline of their lives into history properly. I was surprised to discover the way their lives in 1850s Concord connected with the history of my state via John Brown, and by a small story about Mark Twain's visit where he'd meant to honor Emerson, who was by then suffering from Alzheimer's.

      Cheever's style is easy to digest. She writes in short chapters that capture a particular moment or factor in the lives of her subjects. It's a book that's both easy to put down and pick back up. There are times -- increasingly frequent as the book progresses -- where Cheever's own impressions of things and places start to dot the territory. I found these jarring on the first read, though less so on later page-throughs.

      All in all, a book I'd recommend to anyone interested in how these writers, their lives, and their works intersect.
    • 5/5
      Reading this book took me back in time to an era seething of literary greatness. Of course, a book written about many of my favorite authors certainly helped add to my enjoyment. The lives of these authors often seems parallel to their real lives, and it is interesting to learn how they lived and the secrets and scandals that permeated the Transcendental community. As with any good book, I became wrapped up in it and could imagine myself at Walden Pond with Thoreau and hanging out with Margaret Fuller as Hawthorne and Emerson both did. This was a very pleasant read, and I hope to read more from the author in the future.
    • 3/5
      Fascinating multiple bio of the Concord crowd and their intermingled lives (and loves.) Well placed in their historical context, with glimpses of John Brown, Franklin Pierce, Herman Melville and other mid-nineteenth century heavyweights. Full of intriguing and hitherto unknown (to me, anyway) bits of information. Cheever is a little careless with her pronouns and antecedents, but otherwise quite readable.
    • 2/5
      I really wanted to like this book, but it's not a good book. Internally inconsistent, self-contradictory, full of slanted assumptions that go against the evidence (e.g., Hawthorne had a strong sexual side, as demonstrated by his large family--Hawthorne may well have had a strong sexual side, but three children hardly constituted a "large family" in that era and in that place).At times the writing became so wooly that I was hard-pressed to discern what point, if any, was being made. The best parts involve Louisa May Alcott and Henry David Thoreau. Here Cheever is a sympathetic but clear-eyed observer of actions long past. Two stars for the subject matter and a good bibliography.
    • 4/5
      This is an entertaining introduction to the Transcendentalists, the group of American writers and thinkers that gathered around Concord, Massachusetts in the nineteenth century. Cheever does this by alternating thematic biographical sketches to which she adds her critical comments. The time line of these sketches see-saws back and forth as she concentrates on one person and a theme and then goes back to pick up another’s story. She begins with the architect of the group, Ralph Waldo Emerson, a man who grew up in less than genteel circumstances, married well, was bereaved early, and then determinedly used the wealth inherited from his first wife to draw together a Lyceum in rural Massachusetts, connected to but physically removed from the bustle of literary life in Boston and New York. As Cheever puts it, “Emerson wrote some wonderful lines, and some true biographical portraits, but it is as the sugar daddy of American literature that he really takes his place in the pantheon of Concord writers.” (page 38) 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.
    • 3/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 3/5
      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.)
    • 2/5
      Great content, but not very well written. Rather confusing storytelling sequence.
    • 3/5
      While I agree with the author's take on this subject (i. e., the personal angle), the actual novel that results is ridiculous and confusing. The narrative "flow" is inexplicable. Cheever jumps from author to author and event to event in a manner which seems almost drunken at times. She tries to explain this approach in the preface of the novel, but what we end up with is a sloppy, random mess. I think her heart was in the right place, though; she just needed a firm editor's hand.
    • 3/5
      We know them all from high school English: The founding fathers (and mothers) of American literature. But Susan Cheever takes our knowledge a step further: Louisa May Alcott lived next door to Emerson and had a crush on Thoreau; Nathaniel Hawthorne was a ladies' man who married the sister of one of his girlfriends; Hawthorne and Emerson, both married with families, seemed to be vying for the attentions of Margaret Fuller. The tragic story of Fuller, who appears to have been the brightest of the group, helps explain why she has become the forgotten heroine of 19th century literature. In all, it's like a special issue of People magazine for lit majors and geeks.
    • 4/5
      An adult book -- crazy, I know. I'm giving it four stars for being so excessively readable and fun, but Cheever makes a lot of Big Statements without really backing them up, with is troubling in a nonfiction book.