The Concord Quartet: Alcott, Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau and the Friendship That Freed the American Mind - Hardcover

by Samuel A. Schreiner (Author)

We will walk on our own feet;

Front Jacket

Ralph Waldo Emerson was not happy to be heading back to Concord, Massachusetts, in the fall of 1834. Although the autumn leaves were brilliant, he could think only of his situation. Having left a job, lost both his wife and brother, and no longer able to rent suitable quarters in Boston, he was returning to the family homestead to figure out what to do next.

That day, no one would have guessed that he was starting a journey that would lead him to an American Renaissance in thought and philosophy as well as to a friendship that would span decades with three equally remarkable men and neighbors: Nathaniel Hawthorne, novelist; Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author; and Amos Bronson Alcott, educator. As engaging as a novel, The Concord Quartet brings these nineteenth-century cultural icons to life.

Deftly interweaving the everyday dramas of the four men's lives--their marriages, children, friends, accomplishments, disappointments, illnesses, and deaths--as well as a full account of their books and the development of the transcendentalist philosophies that united them, The Concord Quartet will fascinate readers with its modern resonance, as the men struggled with ideas that still perplex people today:

Is the Bible divinely inspired and literally true? "The highest revelation is that God is in every man," Ralph Waldo Emerson decided early on, stating the essence of transcendentalism in a sentence and boldly disputing the largely Calvinist beliefs of the day.

What is the nature of work? Nathaniel Hawthorne, weighing coal and salt for an income to support his writing, claimed that his work on the docks had turned him into a "business machine," unfit to mingle with the intelligentsia. Yet, the ability to do manual labor and, at the same time, live "in a region of high thought" was applauded by transcendentalists.

What's the proper way to educate children? Without whipping and "in the wise way which unfolds what lies in the child's nature, as a flower blooms," wrote Louisa May Alcott, describing her father Bronson Alcott's then-heretical teaching methods.

The neighbors also had their share of spats. Noted Emerson at one point, grousing about Thoreau: "What can you have in common with a man who does not know the difference between ice cream and cabbage and who has no experience of wine or ale?"

Engrossing, brimming with detail, and intellectually engaging, The Concord Quartet gives readers a thorough look at America's "intellectual declaration of independence," and it will keep you turning pages as in the best historical novels. You'll be reluctant to leave the vibrant and wholly American world this book brings to life.

Back Jacket

We will walk on our own feet;

we will work with our own hands;

we will speak our own minds.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The American Scholar," 1837

From the start of transcendentalism and America's intellectual renaissance in the 1830s, to the Civil War and beyond, the story of four extraordinary friends whose lives shaped a nation

"Beginning in the 1830s, coincidences that seem almost miraculous in retrospect brought together in Concord as friends and neighbors four men of very different temperaments and talents who shared the same conviction that the soul had 'inherent power to grasp the truth' and that the truth would make men free of old constraints on thought and behavior. In addition to Emerson, a philosopher, there was Amos Bronson Alcott, an educator; Henry David Thoreau, a naturalist and rebel; and Nathaniel Hawthorne, a novelist. This book is the story of that unique and influential friendship in action, of the lives the friends led, and their work that resulted in an enduring change in their nation's direction."
--From the Prologue

Author Biography

Samuel A. Schreiner Jr., a veteran journalist and former senior editor at "Reader's Digest," is the author of both novels and nonfiction, including "The Trials of Mrs. Lincoln, Henry Clay Frick: The Gospel of Greed," and "The Passionate Beechers: A Family Saga of Sanctity and Scandal That Changed America." He lives in Darien, Connecticut.