Alcott, Amos Bronson (1799-1888)
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
(Amos) Bronson Alcott was born in Wolcott, Connecticut on 29 November 1799 and died in Boston, Massachusetts on 4 March 1888, preceding in death by two days his famous daughter, Louisa May, who in narratives like Little Women (1868) and "Transcendental Wild Oats" (1873) fictionalized her childhood experience of the Alcott family. In 1830 he married Abigail (neé May) Alcott, an activist in the Suffrage, Temperance, and Abolitionist movements. Bronson Alcott was second cousin to William Andrus (Alexander) Alcott, also a Temperance activist and the first president of the American Vegetarian Society. After the family moved to Boston, Alcott became active in the Abolitionist movement and in 1836 he joined the Transcendentalist Club. There, he spent time with Theodore Parker, Henry David Thoreau was a life-long friend as was Margaret Fuller, and Ralph Waldo Emerson was a long-time friend and benefactor to the family.
With financial support from Emerson, in early May 1842 Alcott accepted an invitation to visit Alcott House, a reformist school and community at Ham Common in Surrey, near London, which was inspired by Alcott's Temple School in Boston. Returning to New England with
Charles Lane (one of the supporters of Alcott House), together in May 1843 they founded the utopian vegan community,
Fruitlands. Here, their shared Transcendentalist and radical Abolitionist principles were put into practice. The diet at Fruitlands was strictly vegan and excluded any produce of enslaved labor, such as sugar. It is possible that the prevalence of
Free Produce Societies in England by the early 1830s was an influence; however, the community embraced a project of ethical veganism that went beyond dietary refusals in their attempt to abstain from all forms of animal exploitation, including the use of leather, manure, or animal labor. While the vegan experiment at Fruitlands was short-lived, many of Alcott's publications date from the latter part of his life which was dominated by his work as a reformist educator in a diversity of contexts. In Bayard Taylor’s “
Experiences of the A.C.” (1872), a satirical depiction of a Transcendentalist vegan group (the Arcadia Club), Bronson Alcott is cited as the “purple Plato of modern times.”
IMAGE:
Appleton's annual cyclopedia and register of
important events. New York: Appleton, 1875. 10.
PUBLICATIONS
“
The Consociate Family Life” [with Charles Lane].
The New York Weekly Tribune, 2 September 1843. Rpt.
The Liberator Vol. 13 xxxviii (22 September 1843): 152
; New Age and Concordium Gazette. Vol. 1 no. 11 (1 November 1843): 116-120.
"
Fruitlands" [with Charles Lane].
The Dial Vol. IV (July 1843): 135-36.
The Dial Vol. I, no. 1 (July 1840): 85-98.
The Dial Vol. I, no. 3 (January 1841): 351-361.
The Dial Vol. II, no. 4 (April 1842): 423-425.
Philosophemes.
The Journal of Speculative Philosophy Vol. 9 no. 1 (1875): 1-16.
Sonnets and Canzonets. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1882.
Tablets. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1868.
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