Amos Bronson Alcott

Karen English (San Jose State University)

Ed. by Nick Selby, University of East Anglia, Emory Elliott, University of California, Riverside
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.2: American (US) Writing and Culture: The Nineteenth Century, 1783-1900.
Vol. editors: J. Michael Duvall (College of Charleston), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Tony Papanikolas (San Jose State University)

Dates

Born 24 Nov 1799
Died 4 Mar 1888
Activity 1835-1888

Places

Born in United States
Active in United States

Activities

Primary

Educationalist
Essayist

Other

Autobiographer
Poet

Resources

Alcott's Works

Save to Bookshelf

Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888) was born on November 29, 1799 in Wolcott, CT, a small New England farming community. Originally from England, the Alcock family changed the spelling of their name to Alcox; Bronson and his cousin William converted their names to Alcott in the 1820s. Bronson's father Joseph Alcox was a farmer and craftsman; mother Anna Bronson could read and kept a journal. At her urging, Alcott began writing in a journal at age twelve. Alcott's cousin William was a close friend and correspondent. The two boys lived close enough to each other to be daily companions in conversation and letter writing; they shared books in a common “Juvenile Library”, as they called it. Among their treasured volumes were the Bible and John Bunyan's

The Pilgrim's Progress

(1678).

After a

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

1473 words

Citation: English, Karen. "Amos Bronson Alcott". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 February 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=61, accessed 23 November 2024.]

View recommended reading for this article