Sonnets and Canzonets

by Amos Bronson Alcott

A. Bronson Alcott was a Transcendentalist from New England who knew famous figures like Emerson, Thoreau, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Today he is perhaps best known for being the father of Louisa May Alcott, who wrote the Little Women Series. This is a compilation of some of his own poetry.

28 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

American transcendentalist philosopher Amos Bronson Alcott developed a theory of education, based on mutual respect and Socratic questioning rather than authority and rote learning.

He fathered Louisa May Alcott, a daughter.

This teacher, writer, and reformer pioneered new ways of interacting with young students, focusing on a conversational style, and avoided traditional punishment. He expected to perfect the human spirit and to that end advocated a vegan diet before people coined the term. He, also an abolitionist, advocated for rights of women.

Alcott with only minimal formal schooling attempted a career as a traveling salesman. Worried about potential negative effect of the itinerant life on his soul, he turned to teaching. With his controversial innovative methods, however, he rarely stayed in one place very long. He turned his experience at his most well-known teaching position at the temple school in Boston into two books: Records of a School and Conversations with Children on the Gospels. Alcott, a major figure in transcendentalism, befriended Ralph Waldo Emerson. People heavily criticize his incoherent writings on behalf of that movement. Based on his ideas for human perfection, Alcott founded Fruitlands, a transcendentalist experiment in community living. After seven months, the brief project failed. Alcott continued to struggle financially for most of his life. Nevertheless, he continued focusing on educational projects and opened a new school at the end of his life in 1879.

Alcott married Abby May in 1830, and four daughters eventually survived. Their second daughter, Louisa May Alcott, fictionalized her experience with the family in her novel Little Women in 1868. Alcott, often criticized for his inability to earn a living and to support his family, often relied on loans from other persons, including his brother-in-law and Ralph Waldo Emerson. He was never financially secure until his daughter became a best-selling novelist.

(From wikipedia.com, link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_Bro...)

Reviews

[Kristi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bronson Alcott is noted as a great thinker rather than a great writer. (In fact, he's noted as a poor and convoluted writer). That said, this brief volume contains many poems that are both readable and quite beautiful. My one regret is that the poems are not titled, and so the reader has often to guess at the subjects, who are predominately Alcott's family and famous friends. This is sometimes easier to do than other times, and depends largely on the readers knowledge of personal context. Published posthumously, many of the poems have a nostalgic, mournful, and elegiac quality of an aged man looking back on his life, his loves, and his regrets.