Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888)

Hernstad, Richard L., ed. The Letters of A. Bronson Alcott. Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1969. This provides only brief glimpses of Alcott’s childhhod in Wolcott. Shepard’s Journal is or more use.

Morrow, Honore Willsie. The Father of Little Women. Boston: Little,Borwn, 1927. “This is in no sense a biography. It is merely an attempt to retrieve something infinitely precious that has long been mislaid in America: namely Bronson Alcott’s theory of the best method to educate children.” (p. 3)  It is in a sense a biography – somewhat unsophisticated and dated, but nicely written.

Sanborn, Franklin B., and Harris, William T., eds. A Bronson Alcott: His Life and Philosophy. 2 vols.  Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1893. An excellent source, not only of Alcott’s life and thought but of educational history from the intellectual experimentalists’ perspective. A “must” for historians of education. Alcott taught in Cheshire before moving to Boston. Alcott’s “New Connecticut,” an autobriogbraphical poem published with copious notes in 1881 and in an edition edited by Franklinb Sanborn in 1887, provides much information about life in Connecticut in the early nineteenth century.

Shepard, Odell. The Journals of Bronson Alcott. Boston: Little, Brown, 1938. Alcott left Connecticut in 1828 at 28, but there is much Connecticut material here, written by a man who knew the state’s history well.

--Pedlar’s Progress; the Life of Bronson Alcott. Boston: Little Brown, 1937.  “This book was written out of the assured conviction that America has always been, is now, and throughout her coming centuries will continue to be profoundly idealistic … [I] wish to illustrate if not to prove this conviction … to tell the story of a life that began in the very time and place from which the machine, the factory, industrialism, and ‘big business’ also took their American start.” (ix-x) This book is based on 30,000 pages of Alcott’s Journals and much correspondence; useful bibliography, adequate index, a very good book.