New Connecticut (1881/1887)

AUTHOR: Alcott, Amos Bronson

KEYWORDS: food, Temperance, slavery, Abolition, farming, land usage, Transcendentalism

 

SUMMARY (Bryn Skibo, revised Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):

This long narrative poem exists in two editions: the 1881 privately printed edition and a 1887 edition edited by F. B. Sanborn. The introduction to the 1887 edition by F. B. Sanborn provides a brief biographical sketch of Alcott. This later edition has two additional sections - “III. The Adventure Renewed” and “IV. Failure and Retreat” - compared to the privately printed 1881 edition. The notes for these latter sections were written by Sanborn. The final section was never completed by Alcott and contains some fragments with Sanborn's prose explanations and additions. The notes, which provide mostly contextual, geographical, and historical information, are longer than the actual poem and take up slightly more than half the volume.

As the subtitle suggests, this is an autobiographical poem narrating Alcott's early life in four sections: “The Farmer's Boy,” “The Pedler's Progress”, “The Adventure Renewed,” and “Failure and Retreat.” The poem covers his upbringing and his early years up to 1824. Perhaps due to the period in his life addressed by the poem, Alcott makes no explicit reference to his later ethical veganism. Oblique reference is made to the Temperance movement and Abolition is engaged a little more explicitly but Alcott reserves his reformist energies for the topics of land usage and industrial farming. The notes, specifically, include vivid descriptions of farming and husbandry on Spindle Hill (the home of the Alcott farm) and elsewhere, making clear Alcott's opposition to industrial farming: “But whatever of picturesque grace once attached to these rural occupations is now superseded by prose machinery, and the golden age of poetic labor is departed from us” (149 n19).

The first section portrays family relations and describes the landscape of the region (Wolcott, Connecticut). Alcott records his impressions of everyday life at the home farm, describes his schooling and apprenticeship, and conveys his discovery of books, particularly Night Thoughts, Paradise Lost, Pilgrim's Progress, and especially the Bible. The second section focuses on his experience as a peddler in Virginia (he goes south twice, once with his brother Chatfield), selling all kinds of goods -- from almanacs to tinware -- in the Norfolk, Chesapeake, Hampton, and Yorktown areas. He has access to the libraries of his affluent customers and reads voraciously. This second section narrates his transformation from “farmer” to “fine gentleman” (71). The third section is an account of Alcott's third trip south, together with his cousin William. After a brief unsuccessful stint in South Carolina as teachers, they head back to Norfolk and take up peddling, making a reasonable profit. Bad weather and bad health eventually entice them to return home. Bronson travels by land, passing through Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, where he spends most of his money on expensive clothes. The fourth and final section focuses on Alcott's fourth trip to the South, during which he goes bankrupt. Another teaching stint in North Carolina does not go particularly well either. He returns home, exhausted and in debt.  Alcott makes a fifth and last foray to the South, which is equally unsuccessful. While the poem is generally idyllic and pastoral in both content and tone, Alcott alludes to his abhorrence of Southern slavery. The final section is made up of only a handful of snippets, with Sanborn providing most of the missing story, by means of additional documents and prose excerpts from letters, diaries, and the like, written by Alcott and others.

 

Last updated on January 10th, 2024

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