Summer Reading Series Week 2
Ah, summer. Long days of good weather and bright sunshine inspired artists, writers, and philosophers to create new work that still resonates in our day.
A Summer of Hummingbirds: Love, Art, and Scandal in the Intersecting Worlds of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Martin Johnson Heade by Christoper Benfey. Penguin Press: 2008.
What was it about the hummingbird that caught the imagination of so many after the Civil War? Writers, painters, teachers, and other well-known figures were drawn to this singular bird and to each other at the end of the nineteenth century. Christopher Benfey offers a glimpse into this creative circle and the impact they had on each other’s work.
American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work by Susan Cheever. Simon and Schuster: 2007.
Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father by John Matteson. W. W. Norton: 2007.
Both of these books look at the Alcott family and its professional and personal connections with the New England Transcendentalists, although the second book focuses more on Louisa and Bronson Alcott’s father-daughter relationship. Both books are entertaining and informative, but I prefer Eden’s Outcasts… simply because it focuses more on Louisa. As a former tomboy, her lack of docility and “coltish manners” really resonated with me. That’s why I loved Jo March so much.