Amos Bronson Alcott

Amos Bronson Alcott ( born November 29, 1799 in Wolcott, Connecticut, † March 4, 1888 in Concord, Massachusetts ) was an American writer and educator, who belonged to the philosophical and literary movement of Transcendentalism in New England.

Amos Bronson Alcott continued the idea of transcendentalism into educational practice. This was based on the non-dogmatic and humanist-oriented teaching of the Unitarians. Students should be mentally and physically equally challenged and encouraged and empowered to self-determined action. The aim was also to awaken an American self-confidence after stripping of the English colonial status. At his school in Boston also taught Margaret Fuller, the subsequent social reformer and women's rights activist.

1842 Alcott founded with other transcendentalists the social utopian settlement Fruitlands. Associates were Elizabeth P. Peabody, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and William Ellery Channing. His project failed, however, a year later, just as a few years after the commune Brook Farm by George Ripley.

Amos Bronson Alcott, the father of writer Louisa May Alcott.

At the age of 88 years, Amos Bronson Alcott died on March 4, 1888 in Concord, Massachusetts. His daughter died just two days after him at a mercury poisoning.

Works

• Conversations with children. , 1836.
• Exempling the general principles. In 1835.
• Record of a school. In 1835.
• Sonnets and canzonets. In 1882.