Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father [Hardcover]

John Matteson (Author)

Book Description

The beloved author of Little Women was torn between pleasing her idealistic father and planting her feet in the material world.

Louisa May Alcott's name is known universally. Yet, during her youth, the famous Alcott was her father, Bronson—an eminent teacher, lecturer, and admired friend of Emerson and Thoreau. Willful and exuberant, Louisa flew in the face of all her father's intricate theories of child rearing. She, in turn, could not understand the frugal life Bronson preached, one that reached its epitome in the failed utopian community of Fruitlands. In a family that insisted on self-denial and spiritual striving, Louisa dreamed of wealth and fame. At the same time, like most daughters, she wanted her father's approval. As her father struggled to recover from a breakdown and slowly resurrect his career, Louisa learned to support her family, teaching if she must, but finally finding her vocation in writing. This story of their tense yet loving relationship adds dimensions to Louisa's life, her work, and the relationships of fathers and daughters. 26 illustrations

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

They were both born on November 29 (he in 1799 and she in 1832), but willful, passionate Louisa May Alcott couldn't have been more different from her serene, unworldly father, Bronson, whom fellow transcendentalists such as Emerson and Thoreau revered for his wide-ranging philosophical pursuits and occasionally ridiculed for his lack of common sense. Bronson's failed educational and utopian ventures placed a great burden on his wife, Abba, while elder daughters Louisa and Anna worked as teachers and paid companions to support the family. Yet Louisa honored her father's steadfast principles, avers Matteson, a professor of English at John Jay College, who views both father and daughter with a sympathy that doesn't quite conceal the book's slightly specious premise. Bronson was far closer to Anna and younger sister Lizzie; Louisa's fiery nature sometimes dismayed him. She only gained his full approval when mistreatment with a mercury-based medicine during the Civil War made her a near-invalid for the rest of her life. This is really a biography of the whole Alcott family, though it narrows to a dual portrait after the wild success of Little Women in 1868 gave Louisa the independence she longed for and Bronson enjoyed more modest acclaim for his book Tablets and lecture tours out West. 26 illus. (Aug.)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* Bronson Alcott filled hundreds of pages with minute observations of his infant daughters, believing that fatherhood was the ideal laboratory for testing his beliefs in the natural genius of children and a holistic mode of education. Yet he was baffled by the willfulness of his second-born, Louisa May. And so begins the dramatic father-daughter relationship on which first-time biographer Matteson so adeptly builds a riveting double portrait of two exceptional Americans and abolitionists: one a man of quixotic dreams and abject failures; the other a resourceful, self-sacrificing, and revolutionary woman writer. Making penetrating use of primary sources, Matteson gracefully interprets an astounding family drama of compassion and creativity, folly and courage, deprivation and mental instability. Sharing a birthday and dying within two days of each other, Bronson and Louisa were the driving forces of the Alcott household as he impressed and dismayed their friends Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau by taking innovative ideas to ruinous extremes, and she became the destitute family's wage-earner and author of one of the world's most beloved novels. Matteson's lucid, commanding biography casts new light on an unusual father-daughter bond and a new land at war with itself. Seaman, Donna

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 512 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (August 17, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393059642
• ISBN-13: 978-0393059649
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #497,779 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I am a native of San Mateo, California who came East for college and, for the most part, stayed. I have a history degree from Princeton, a law degree from Harvard, and a Ph.D. in English from Columbia. In between Harvard and Columbia, I worked as a litigator in San Francisco and Raleigh, North Carolina, but never really knew who I was until I put my law books in storage and decided to devote my life (or a fair amount of it) to reading good books and talking and writing about them. It's worked out pretty well. I'm now a full professor of English at John Jay College. My first book, Eden's Outcasts, won a Pulitzer Prize in biography. I'm currently at work on a biography of Margaret Fuller.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

123 of 125 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An amazing account of two amazing individuals (+ their family & friends), August 29, 2007

By 

Corinne H. Smith (Athol, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father (Hardcover)

She wrote LITTLE WOMEN and became the household breadwinner. He held philosophic conversations after several failed attempts at running his own private school. Both nearly starved at Fruitlands, their utopian experiment. But if that's all you know about Louisa and Bronson Alcott, you are sadly ill-informed. You need to read EDEN'S OUTCASTS; and the sooner, the better.

In spite of its title -- which gives misleading higher billing to Louisa -- this book is indeed a dual biography that documents a complex father-daughter and writer-writer relationship. Chronologically, the treatment has to first study Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888), from his beginnings on a farm in Wolcott, Connecticut, and a rural education that, unlike other Transcendentalist men, did not include a college degree. Working first as a peddler, he later landed what seemed to be the perfect job for such a thoughtful, self-taught young man: school teacher. Soon enough he was married to Abba May (1800-1877) and had a household of little women -- daughters Anna Bronson (1831-1893), Louisa May (1832-1888), Elizabeth Peabody/Sewell (1835-1858), and Abigail May (1840-1879). Matteson follows Bronson's myriad attempts to find suitable jobs as well as every subsequent relocation the family made, covering a good portion of the Northeast and New England. He turns to Louisa as she moves to the family forefront, and also when she serves time as a nurse in a Union Army hospital. Because each member of the family kept a journal, much of their daily lives and thoughts are available to us -- at least, those events and feelings that they took the time to document. Diaries were not kept private in those days.

Center stage here are Bronson -- the fumbling father who wanted very much to be a teacher and philosopher but did not find sustained success in either venture at first -- and "Louy" -- the imaginative tomboy who seemed to defy convention at every turn and gradually created stories that magazine editors were willing to buy, in spite of the fact that a woman wrote them. This is real life, a seesaw featuring a father and a daughter who had very different personalities but sometimes exhibited startling similarities. The ironies are almost staggering: they were both born on November 29th. They both found literary success at the same time, and they both struggled with new-found celebrity. They died within several days of one another. And both were inexplicably influenced by the text of John Bunyan's classic, "The Pilgrim's Progress." Like father, like daughter, in many respects.

Author Matteson obviously read every scrap of writing penned by Louisa and by Bronson; and because of his diligence, we readers have front row seats to their everyday lives. He also takes the time to provide a succinct and sound critique for each of their published or otherwise finished works. His approach in presenting and interpreting the facts is as neutral as possible, while being moderately sympathetic to the foibles of both of his subjects. Readers need not follow his lead: it's difficult at times not to feel terribly sorry for Louisa, Bronson, and the whole Alcott family. The true miracle is that they met and survived their challenges as best they could. And they found enough fame for their work to still be known and appreciated.

The text is wonderfully revealing and readable. Matteson's concluding paragraph is a stand-alone masterpiece. Every biographer should take the time to reflect on his/her subject in such a fashion.

Destined to become THE biography of the Alcotts, EDEN'S OUTCASTS is worthy of sharing a shelf with Megan Marshall's THE PEABODY SISTERS. It's a must-read for fans of the Transcendentalists as well as for the ever-growing number of Louisa May Alcott aficionados.

39 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent biography!, January 5, 2008

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This review is from: Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father (Hardcover)

The author manages to do justice to both his subjects, Louisa May Alcott and her father. He also creates an excellent picture of the time and explains the transcendtalist movement. Besides L.M. Alcott and B. Alcott one learns a lot about Emerson, Thoreau, Elizabeth Peabody and other luminaries of the time. The book is fact driven, there are often long quotations from original material and it is very well written. A most enlightening book, bringing its subjects and their surroundings to life. I originally bought this book becasue of my interst in L.M. Alcott but by the end I found her father at least as interesting.
I read this book like a thriller, finishing it in three days.

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Unique Biography of a Unique Family, February 16, 2008

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Loves the View "Louise" (Hawaii) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father (Hardcover)

Thank you to Jim Matteson for reading every scrap the Alcotts left behind and digesting it into this wonderful dual biography.

I was a young reader of Little Women (maybe 10 times) and the rest of the series. Later as an adult, I never quite put together the pieces the family. Now I know how the Alcotts fit in with Emerson and Thoreau, the role of Fruitlands in the life of the Alcotts and how it was the Amy came to marry Laurie.

The above paragraph could sound flip without the understanding of how Louisa's fiction was a byproduct of both her father's idealism and his inability to support his family. Louisa would be his standard bearer, but she would at all costs, support the family.

Bronson's philosophy of education was ahead of his time. While it can be debated whether his career ending publications served the cause, it is clear, it did not serve the family well. Followed by a second public humiliation in the touted but failed Fruitlands experiment, you can imagine the grief of a former idealist with a young family to feed.

How many father's careers have been rescued by their children... and in the 19th century... any by their daughters? In the case of the Alcotts, it is more than a career redeemed, it is also values and virtues.

Matteson gives a wonderfully readable dual biography. He sticks with his thesis. It's good that he resisted the temptation to delve into the other interesting personalities of the time. Just like when I first read Little Women, I didn't want this book to end.