Inside the Intellectual World of Emerson and Thoreau

“The Emerson Circle” is a group biography of the Transcendentalists, with luminaries Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott, and Nathaniel Hawthorne at the center of it. ”

This Sunday, May 17 at 4 p.m., the Book Shop will be setting up shop in Hastings House, Beverly Farms’ community center, to host author Bruce Nichols for a discussion about his book “The Emerson Circle: The Concord Radicals Who Reinvented the World.”

We invite all who are interested to attend this free event.

“The Emerson Circle” is a group biography of the Transcendentalists, with luminaries Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott, and Nathaniel Hawthorne at the center of it.  Nichols paints Concord as the setting for lively debates about radical ideas that sought to change how Americans lived and thought.  He uncovers little known details about their relationships with each other, their alliances and disagreements.  The book manages to both broadly show the movement at work, as well as feel intimate in its choice of details.  Nichols weaves an incredible amount of research effortlessly into this highly engaging history.

What stood out to me was the intellectualism at the core of these character’s identities.  In addition, that was what they valued in each other, one another’s scholarly opinions and curiosity and rigor of thought.  They made livings (though barely) through public speaking, teaching, and essay publications — and then they birthed a literary movement that gave us “Little Women,” “The Scarlet Letter,” “Walden,” “Leaves of Grass,” and others. In our current era of cancel culture and hot takes, it was refreshing to see intellectualism in action and to make me wonder — and hope — if we could be on the precipice of a new movement with great thinkers who will interrogate and search for how we can be better. In that regard, “The Emerson Circle” gives us inspiration, as well as a partial blueprint. 

Before I came to own the bookstore, I worked with Bruce at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for eleven years.  I have known Bruce to be an incredibly reliable colleague, the voice of reason in any situation, and a tremendous supporter of the work we did on a daily basis.  I have the utmost respect for him as an editor and publisher and now, I’m delighted to say, as an author, too.  It’s really no surprise to me that he has written this accomplished work of history.  (Am I biased? Of course!)  It will be a real treat for me to get to interview him this weekend. I hope you’ll come out and join the discussion.

Hannah Harlow is owner of The Book Shop, an independent bookstore in Beverly Farms.  Harlow writes biweekly recommendations for us.  See more of what she recommends reading at thecricket.com.