American Bloomsbury

By: Susan Cheever

Narrated by: Kate Reading

Here is a brilliant, controversial, and fascinating biography of those who were, in the mid-19th century, at the center of American thought and literature.

It was an eclectic cast of characters. At various times in Concord, Massachusetts, 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 were Henry James, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allen Poe, and others - 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.

It was America's equivalent to England's Bloomsbury. 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.

©2006 Susan Cheever (P)2007 Tantor Media Inc.

Critic reviews

"Beguiling....[a] 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)

Where the classics came from

I enjoyed taking a trip, back, in time, to read about the authors that I read, as a kid, as a teenager, and as an adult. For example, I read Little Women, in fourth grade, The Scarlet Letter, in high school, and some, of Thoreau, and Emerson's essays, this year.

the fact that it was free and it was the author herself Susan Cheever who wrote it.

Thoroughly thoroughly enjoyed this audio. Susan Cheever has a wonderful gift of recreating scenes with vibreant images. She reconstructs Concord with very detailed descriptions of the scenery: what Concord looked like in autumn and winter. The author allowed me (as a reader) to imagine Thoreau and Emerson walking together on Emerson's estate. Excellent storyteller and does a great job interweaving her own experiences in her life with that of the authors mentioned in her book. How each author shaped and influenced her own life. Excellent!

A good overview, but with some problems

I was forewarned by the other reviewers that this book contains some factual errors, but as I knew little about the lives of Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne and Alcott, and was unaware of Margaret Fuller until I listened to this book, I found this audiobook was a good introduction and overview of these writers and their stories. There are some very good passages in this book, for example where Cheever looks at the significance and resonance of Thoreau's Walden, but there are also some passages that seemed out of place. For some reason, Cheever wanted to introduce a memoir-style element into the text by occasionally discussing her own experiences with the places where the Transcendentalists traveled and wrote. Yet these interjections didn't add anything to the understanding of the writers, and often were banal or even bathetic. When Cheever complains that Concord doesn't look like she pictured it from reading about it as it was 150 years ago, I felt like shouting, "Well, what did you expect?!!" The closing passage, in which she imagines still meeting Emerson or Thoreau on the streets of Concord, was trite and self-indulgent. Even so, these digressions were relatively brief and don't prevent the book from being a good overview of its subject matter.

I learned so much!

This book is filled with details about both well-known writers, not so well-known writes, and their entangled lives. The portraits are honest and without embellishment.The author breathes life into familiar details of their histories. For instance, I’d known Margaret Fuller perished in a shipwreck, but in he telling here, the story of her last hours and how the disaster happened put you in her perspective. You know her fear and heartbreak, and then the heartbreak of those who would miss her. The interpersonal dynamics of the writers and artists who came together in Concord then give dimension to them and the works we know so well. I cannot wait for the day when I can go visit Concord and see where they lived, loved, and created.

Good background and kind of gossipy

If you are interested in the Concord Transcendentalists, this book brings them to life.