In 1855, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote a letter that would become one of the most famous pieces of correspondence in American literary history.
That year was a difficult time for the adolescent country. Already sharply divided over the issue of slavery, “free soilers” and pro-slavery factions were quickly disintegrating into bloody violence. The ongoing gold rush and westward expansion was continuing to displace native populations, while the same year, and without irony, a white, anti-immigrant party in Cincinnati would attack a local German-American neighborhood for being foreigners.
Each year, more than 100,000 people visit Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House. This December 25th, millions more will have the chance to learn about Louisa May and her amazing family through the lens of Sony Picture’s newest presentation of the classic book Little Women.
“‘Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents, grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.’” This opening line from Little Women has linked Louisa May Alcott with Christmas for the past 150 years. In keeping with the spirit of the novel, Alcott penned dozens of short stories about the true meaning of Christmas, loosely modeled after Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Like Dickens, Alcott sought to teach her young readers about the virtues of giving versus receiving.
Ghoulies, ghosties, and Puritans. Now that’s a potentially horrifying combination. And who better to pen them loose on the page than Concord author Nathaniel Hawthorne? Born in Salem, Massachusetts on July 4, 1804, Hawthorne came from a family steeped in history, scandals, and a curse put upon them by a young woman about to die.
Just hours after their wedding on the 9th of July 1842, a honeymooning couple moved to Concord, MA and into the house they would rent for the next three years. Shortly after their arrival, the groom, who was also an aspiring author, noted the following, “Houses of antiquity in New England are so invariably possessed with spirits that the matter seems hardly worth alluding to.”
Have you ever felt a compelling need to be somewhere? More than a desire to visit a place and more, even, than a wish to learn. A need to experience and to understand? It was that kind of need that drew Kara Snyder of Pittsburgh, PA to Concord, MA this past summer.
A simple green desk made in Concord, Massachusetts, in about 1838 by a cabinet-maker who charged perhaps one dollar for it, had a career in America’s intellectual history entirely out of proportion to its humble origin, because it was Henry Thoreau’s desk. Since it entered the Concord Museum collection, the desk has become a cornerstone of the Museum and a treasured American icon.
