American Bloomsbury, Susan Cheever
American Bloomsbury, Susan Cheever
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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

Author: Susan Cheever

Narrator: Kate Reading

Unabridged: 6 hr 55 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 01/15/2007


Synopsis

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.


About Susan Cheever

Susan Cheever is the author of both nonfiction and fiction works, including My Name is Bill, Note Found in a Bottle, As Good As I Could Be, Home Before Dark, and Treetops. She is the director of the Yaddo Corporation, and has received the Associated Press Award, the Boston Globe's Winship Medal, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She lives in New York City.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Joshua on July 16, 2008

Entertaining read on Concord, Mass during the 1840s and 50s. The town was essentially a genius garden cultivated by the money and sweat of Ralph Waldo Emerson. After his first wife (and love) Ellen died young, Emerson inherited a small fortune and used it to buy up properties in Concord and lure New......more

Goodreads review by Dave on May 28, 2014

Not awful, but not great either. Other reviews critical of Cheever for being factually inaccurate in places gives me pause, but I don't have the knowledge to comment further. However, I would have liked this book to have been less repetitive and grapple with the issues more deeply. Instead, it was b......more