Download or read book Literary Concord Uncovered written by Joseph L. Andrews and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2014 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Literary Concord Uncovered written by Joseph L. Andrews and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2014-07-15 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did Concord, Massachusetts, the small inland farming village, twenty miles northwest of Boston, become the center of America’s intellectual life in the mid 1800’s? And why did celebrated authors Henry D. Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Margaret Fuller all live and write at that same time in Concord? Literary Concord Uncovered provides a wonderful introductory overview of Concord’s classic authors and their creations. It reveals some of the secrets that enabled these brilliant American authors to write their pioneering works, which include Thoreau’s Walden, Emerson’s “Self Reliance,” Alcott’s Little Women and Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. This book will help readers gain a deeper understanding and experience greater enjoyment from reading extraordinary and exciting books by many of Concord’s—and America’s--greatest authors.
Download or read book Honor in Concord written by Cathryn McIntyre and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2008-07 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The writers of Concord, Massachusetts' literary past are alive in present day in Honor in Concord. They appear as characters who struggle between their need for freedom and self-determination and the sense of responsibility they feel toward the commitments they have made. Do the commitments we make define or limit us? Is freedom an illusion? Are we ever truly free? Honor in Concord also asks: What if we choose to honor our lives? What if we choose to honor who we are and who others determine themselves to be? What if we choose to honor the commitments we've made to ourselves and others leaving our hearts intact, rather than allowing our lives to shatter out of a sense of boredom or regret or out of the mistaken belief that none of it matters anyway? The message here is that all that we think, say, and do has meaning. Our actions and intentions make up the very essence of who we are and help to form the circumstances of the world in which we live. In Honor in Concord the author's own story is also told. What results is a weave of fiction and fact that includes extraordinary moments from her own life, as well as poignant images that she draws from Concord's literary past, like that of Thoreau in his final days struggling to complete his essay, Walking; Hawthorne "drifting into the sea of infinity" as he writes; and Martha Hunt's act of "purification" in the waters of the Concord River. It is through this mix of reality and imagination that we see the link that exists between the present and the past and we are reminded of the presence of spirit in our lives. We are reminded of what Emerson called the infinitude of the soul.
Download or read book American Bloomsbury written by Susan Cheever and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2007-09-18 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A portrait of five Concord, Massachusetts, writers whose works were at the center of mid-nineteenth-century American thought and literature evaluates their interconnected relationships, influence on each other's works, and complex beliefs.
Download or read book Hawthorne in Concord written by Philip McFarland and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A richly textured account of the writer’s three sojourns in New England “illuminates Hawthorne’s art and the intellectual ferment originating in that small, bucolic town” (Publishers Weekly). On his wedding day in 1842, Nathaniel Hawthorne escorted his new wife, Sophia, to their first home, the Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts. There, enriched by friendships with Thoreau and Emerson, he enjoyed an idyllic time. But three years later, unable to make enough money from his writing, he returned ingloriously, with his wife and infant daughter, to live in his mother’s home in Salem. In 1853, Hawthorne moved back to Concord, now the renowned author of The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables. Eager to resume writing fiction at the scene of his earlier happiness, he assembled a biography of his college friend Franklin Pierce, who was running for president. When Pierce won the election, Hawthorne was appointed the lucrative post of consul in Liverpool. Coming home from Europe in 1860, Hawthorne settled down in Concord once more. He tried to take up writing one last time, but deteriorating health found him withdrawing into private life. In Hawthorne in Concord, acclaimed historian Philip McFarland paints a revealing portrait of this well-loved American author during three distinct periods of his life, spent in the bucolic village of Concord, Massachusetts. “I don’t know when I have read a book as satisfying as Hawthorne in Concord.” —David Herbert Donald
Download or read book Black Walden written by Elise Lemire and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-08-24 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Concord, Massachusetts, has long been heralded as the birthplace of American liberty and American letters. It was here that the first military engagement of the Revolutionary War was fought and here that Thoreau came to "live deliberately" on the shores of Walden Pond. Between the Revolution and the settlement of the little cabin with the bean rows, however, Walden Woods was home to several generations of freed slaves and their children. Living on the fringes of society, they attempted to pursue lives of freedom, promised by the rhetoric of the Revolution, and yet withheld by the practice of racism. Thoreau was all but alone in his attempt "to conjure up the former occupants of these woods." Other than the chapter he devoted to them in Walden, the history of slavery in Concord has been all but forgotten. In Black Walden: Slavery and Its Aftermath in Concord, Massachusetts, Elise Lemire brings to life the former slaves of Walden Woods and the men and women who held them in bondage during the eighteenth century. After charting the rise of Concord slaveholder John Cuming, Black Walden follows the struggles of Cuming's slave, Brister, as he attempts to build a life for himself after thirty-five years of enslavement. Brister Freeman, as he came to call himself, and other of the town's slaves were able to leverage the political tensions that fueled the American Revolution and force their owners into relinquishing them. Once emancipated, however, the former slaves were permitted to squat on only the most remote and infertile places. Walden Woods was one of them. Here, Freeman and his neighbors farmed, spun linen, made baskets, told fortunes, and otherwise tried to survive in spite of poverty and harassment. With a new preface that reflects on community developments since the hardcover's publication, Black Walden reminds us that this was a black space before it was an internationally known green space and preserves the legacy of the people who strove against all odds to overcome slavery and segregation.
Download or read book A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers written by Henry David Thoreau and published by . This book was released on 1883 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Concord Quartet written by Samuel Agnew Schreiner and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2006-08-04 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "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
Download or read book Mr Emerson s Wife written by Amy Belding Brown and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2006-05-30 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this novel about Ralph Waldo Emerson's wife, Lidian, Amy Belding Brown examines the emotional landscape of love and marriage. Living in the shadow of one of the most famous men of her time, Lidian becomes deeply disappointed by marriage, but consigned to public silence by social conventions and concern for her family's reputation. Drawn to the erotic energy and intellect of close family friend Henry David Thoreau, she struggles to negotiate the confusing territory between love and friendship while maintaining her moral authority and inner strength. In the course of the book, she deals with overwhelming social demands, faces devastating personal loss, and discovers the deepest meaning of love. Lidian eventually encounters the truth of her own character and learns that even our faults can lead us to independence.
Download or read book Cape Cod written by Henry David Thoreau and published by . This book was released on 1892 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Eden s Outcasts The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father written by John Matteson and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2010-08-13 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography Louisa May Alcott is known universally. Yet during Louisa's youth, the famous Alcott was her father, Bronson—an eminent teacher and a friend of Emerson and Thoreau. He desired perfection, for the world and from his family. Louisa challenged him with her mercurial moods and yearnings for money and fame. The other prize she deeply coveted—her father's understanding—seemed hardest to win. This story of Bronson and Louisa's tense yet loving relationship adds dimensions to Louisa's life, her work, and the relationships of fathers and daughters.
Download or read book Novel Destinations written by Shannon McKenna Schmidt and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2008 with total page 527 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Geographic leads book-loving adventurers on a whirlwind tour of 500 literary landmarks and offers practical trip-planning advice for visiting in person. Peppered with great reading suggestions and little-known tales of literary gossip, this book is the ultimate browser's delight.
Download or read book Fresh Complaint written by Jeffrey Eugenides and published by Knopf Canada. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Proudly presenting the widely anticipated new work of fiction from the multi-award winning bestselling author of Middlesex--a #1 major bestseller in Canada--and The Marriage Plot--also an acclaimed national bestseller--and the beloved The Virgin Suicides. Featuring unseen stories from one of the most eclectic, dynamic fiction writers working today, Fresh Complaint brings together works both new and previously published--including the crème de la crème of Eugenides's beloved New Yorker stories, never before collected between two covers. Jeffrey Eugenides's bestselling novels have shown that he is an astute observer of the crises of adolescence, sexual identity, self-discovery, family love and what it means to be an American in our times. The stories in Fresh Complaint continue that tradition. Ranging from the reproductive antics of "Baster" to the wry, moving account of a young traveller's search for enlightenment in "Air Mail" (selected by Annie Proulx for The Best American Short Stories 1997), this collection presents characters in the midst of personal and national crises. We meet a failed poet who, envious of other people's wealth during the real-estate bubble, becomes an embezzler; a clavichordist whose dreams of art collapse under the obligations of marriage and fatherhood; and, in "Bronze," a sexually confused college freshman whose encounter with a stranger on a train leads to a revelation about his past and his future. Narratively compelling, beautifully written and packed with a density of ideas that belie their fluid grace, Fresh Complaint proves Eugenides to be a master of the short form as well as the long. Showcasing stories from as far back as the 1980s and as recently as 2017, Fresh Complaint is the career-spanning collection from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author.
Download or read book Deep Travel written by David K. Leff and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2009-04 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the hot summer of 2004, David Leff floated away from the routine of daily life just as Henry David Thoreau and his brother had done in their own small boat in 1839. Fortified with Thoreau’s observations as revealed in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Leff brought his own concept of mindful deep travel to these same New England waterways. His first-person narrative uses his ecological way of looking, of going deep rather than far, to show that our outward journeys are inseparable from our inward ones. How we see depends on where we are in our lives and with whom we travel. Leff chose his companions wisely. In consecutive journeys his neighbor and friend Alan, a veteran city planner; his son Josh, an energetic eleven-year-old; and his sweetheart Pamela, a compassionate professional caregiver, added their perspectives to Leff’s own experiences as a government official in natural resources policy. Not so much sight seeing as sight seeking, together they explored a geography of the imagination as well as the rich natural and human histories of the rivers and their communities. The heightened awareness of deep travel demands that we immerse ourselves fully in places and realize that they exist in time as well as space. Its mindfulness enriches the experience and makes the voyager worthy of the journey. Leff’s intriguing, contemplative deep travel along these historic rivers presents a methodology for exploration that will enrich any trip.
Download or read book The Crossroads of American History and Literature written by and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Hopeful Heart written by Deborah Noyes and published by Schwartz & Wade. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did Little Women-- the beloved literary classic and inspiration for Greta Gerwig's acclaimed feature film adaptation--come to be? This stunning biography explores the unique family and unusual circumstances of literary icon Louisa May Alcott. Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. How did these cherished characters come to be? Louisa May Alcott, the author of one of the most famous "girl" books of all time, was anything but a well-mannered young lady. A tomboy as well as a ravenous reader, Louisa took comfort in fictional characters that were as passionate and willful as she was--and whose wild imaginations were a match for her own. She was often found roaming the woods near her home in Concord, Massachusetts, or exploring the natural world in the company of the great Transcendentalist thinkers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Here is a beautiful portrait of Louisa May Alcott, a woman influenced by her father, a penniless philosopher, her mother, with whom she shared a great connection, and, of course, her three sisters. Featuring unique indigo illustrations, Deborah Noyes unveils how Louisa's natural spirit, loving family, and unconventional circumstances inspired the timeless masterpiece that is Little Women.
Download or read book Thoreau s Country written by David R. Foster and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1977 David Foster took to the woods of New England to build a cabin with his own hands. Along with a few tools he brought a copy of the journals of Henry David Thoreau. Foster was struck by how different the forested landscape around him was from the one Thoreau described more than a century earlier. The sights and sounds that Thoreau experienced on his daily walks through nineteenth-century Concord were those of rolling farmland, small woodlands, and farmers endlessly working the land. As Foster explored the New England landscape, he discovered ancient ruins of cellar holes, stone walls, and abandoned cartways--all remnants of this earlier land now largely covered by forest. How had Thoreau's open countryside, shaped by ax and plough, divided by fences and laneways, become a forested landscape? Part ecological and historical puzzle, this book brings a vanished countryside to life in all its dimensions, human and natural, offering a rich record of human imprint upon the land. Extensive excerpts from the journals show us, through the vividly recorded details of daily life, a Thoreau intimately acquainted with the ways in which he and his neighbors were changing and remaking the New England landscape. Foster adds the perspective of a modern forest ecologist and landscape historian, using the journals to trace themes of historical and social change. Thoreau's journals evoke not a wilderness retreat but the emotions and natural history that come from an old and humanized landscape. It is with a new understanding of the human role in shaping that landscape, Foster argues, that we can best prepare ourselves to appreciate and conserve it today. From the journal: "I have collected and split up now quite a pile of driftwood--rails and riders and stems and stumps of trees--perhaps half or three quarters of a tree...Each stick I deal with has a history, and I read it as I am handling it, and, last of all, I remember my adventures in getting it, while it is burning in the winter evening. That is the most interesting part of its history. It has made part of a fence or a bridge, perchance, or has been rooted out of a clearing and bears the marks of fire on it...Thus one half of the value of my wood is enjoyed before it is housed, and the other half is equal to the whole value of an equal quantity of the wood which I buy." --October 20, 1855
