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

What a marvelous job Susan Cheever does of unearthing all the interesting facts and juxtaposing them, so they tell the fascinating story of the American literary stars of mid 19th century Concord and how they intermingled and affected each other. Louisa May Alcott, Hawthorne, Emerson, Thoreau and Margaret Fuller were part of that explosion of ideas and an intellectual community which occurs every so often in history and bequeaths us such a rich literary heritage. I am itching to read again all those works, taking in the context of the real writers Cheever so masterfully describes.

The 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....

"Beguiling.... lively and insightful introduction to the personalities and achievements of the men and women who were seminal figures in America's literary renaissance...[Cheever] keenly analyzes the positive and negative ways they influenced one another's ideas and beliefs and the literature that came out of "this sudden outbreak of genius."

-- Publishers Weekly

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.

Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Distributor: Simon & Schuster
Publication Date: 09-18-2007
Pages: 240
Measurements: 9.25in X 6.12in X 9.87oz