Transcendentalism

Bronson Alcott and Ralph Waldo Emerson were not just two of the leading thinkers of the American Transcendentalist movement, but they were also close friends. It was the genius of Emerson that attracted Alcott to Concord, Massachusetts.

This is where Alcott would move his family following the closure of Temple School in Boston. In Concord, Bronson Alcott (along with his daughter Louisa May) were surrounded by the core of American Transcendentalists, including Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Emerson's first published book "Nature," is considered to be his most significant work, and the blueprint for his philosophy of American Transcendentalism. Emerson died of pneumonia in 1882.

Alcott's biography and praise of his friend, "Ralph Waldo Emerson, philosopher and seer: an estimate of his character and genius in prose and verse," was published in London in 1889.

Tremont Temple, Boston. This is where Alcott's Temple School opened September 22, 1834. Regarded as the most famous of his educational experiments, Temple School allowed Alcott to put his progressive theories and teaching principles into practice.

Two fellow Transcendentalists Elizabeth Palmer Peabody and Margaret Fuller were hired as assistants.

Elizabeth Peabody published the framework for Temple School in her book Record of a School in 1835, before opening the first kindergarten in the United States.

A. Bronson Alcott wrote about the time at Temple School in a pair of volumes titled Conversations With Children on the Gospels in 1836.