New English

THE JOURNALS OF BRONSON ALCOTT -- Edited by Odell Shepard -- Little, Brown ($5).

One small but significant event in recent literary history has been the rediscovery of Bronson Alcott. Until two years ago this genial New England philosopher enjoyed an unread celebrity as the father of Louisa May Alcott, a friend of Emerson, one of the least coherent of the Transcendentalists, a slightly daffy but harmless mystic. Glimpses of Alcott in Van Wyck Brooks's The Flowering of New England exploded these literary myths. Odell Shepard's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Alcott, Pedlar's Progress, gave further proof of their injustice. This week the publication of long sections from Alcott's journals clears up any remaining doubts about Alcott's importance.

This changed opinion of Alcott reveals a new view of old New England life. One popular biographical sport of the 1920s consisted of picturing Hawthorne, Emerson and their fellows as frustrated Puritans or insipid moralists. But Alcott was so indifferent to worldly success, so unintimidated by misfortune and so generally frank and good-natured that he corrects that exaggerated picture of the inhibited Yankee.

His journal begins in 1826, when he was teaching school in Connecticut. The first entries are pious and stiff. After he gets involved with the early abolitionists in Boston, marries and comes under the influence of the Rev. Mr. Emerson, he begins to write unselfconsciously and lightly, mixing portraits of his neighbors with reflections on God, literature, teaching, fugitive slaves he sheltered, the punishment of children (he had come to the painful conclusion that his disobedient daughter Louisa was possessed of the devil).

Readers of Alcott's Journals are likely to feel about Alcott much as New Englanders of his day did--first interested, then exasperated, ultimately admiring and fond. Alcott was no parlor philosopher.

In a vain attempt to rescue a fugitive slave he charged the Boston courthouse singlehanded, after one man had been killed and while bullets were still flying, thought so little of the act that he barely noted it in his diary. Of sure taste, he inspired Emerson, recognized Whitman, Thoreau, Melville and Lowell when they were unknown, made critical appraisals of them which still stand. Readers of his Journals will have no difficulty in seeing why Emerson and Hawthorne praised him so highly, are likely to feel it more puzzling that he has been neglected for so long.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.