File:Home school of American literature- (1897) (14769544413).jpg

Identifier: homeschoolofamer00bird (find matches)
Title: Home school of American literature:
Year: 1897 (1890s)
Authors: Birdsall, William Wilfred, 1854-1909, (from old catalog) comp. and ed Jones, Rufus Matthew, 1863- (from old catalog) joint comp. and ed
Subjects: American literature English literature
Publisher: Philadelphia, Pa., Elliott publishing co
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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d until the day of his death, which occurred in Con-cord, April 27, 1882, in the seventy-eighth year of his age. RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 73 It was in Concord that the poet and essayist, as the prophet of the advancedthought of his age, gathered around him those leading spirits who were dissatisfiedwith the selfishness and shallowness of existing society, and, who had been led byhim to dream of an ideal condition in which all should live as one family. Out ofthis grew the famous Brook Farm Community. This was not an original ideaof Emersons, however. Coleridge and Southey, of England, had thought of found-ing such a society in Pennsylvania, on the Susquehanua River. Emerson regardedthis community of interests as the clear teachings of Jesus Christ; and, to put intopractical operation this idea, a farm of about two hundred acres was bought atRoxbury, Mass., and a stock company was formed under the title of The BrookFarm Institution of Agriculture and Education. About seventy members joined
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HOME OP RALPH WALDO EMERSON, CONCORD, MASS. in the enterprise. The principle of the organization was cooperative, the memberssharing the profits. Nathaniel Hawthorne, the greatest of romancers, Chas. A.Dana, of the New York Tribune, Geo. W. Curtis, of Harpers Monthly, Henry D.Thoreau, the poet naturalist, Amos Bronson Alcott, the transcendental dreamer andwriter of strange shadowy sayings, and Margaret Fuller, the most learned woman ofher age, were prominent members who removed to live on the farm. It is said thatEmerson, himself, never really lived there; but was a member and frequent visitor,as were other prominent scholars of the same school. The project was a failure.After five years of experience, some of the houses were destroyed by fire, the enter-prise given up, and the membership scattered. 74 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. But the Brook Farm served its purpose in literature by bringing together someof the best intellects in America, engaging them for five years in a common courseof st

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