Bronson Alcott 1799 – 1888

Amos Bronson Alcott was an American Transcendentalist philosopher, educator, and social reformer and the father of the novelist Louisa May Alcott. His Temple School in Boston in the 1830s and the short-lived Fruitlands communal experiment in 1843 were among the most ambitious applications of Transcendentalist principles to education and to communal life. A close friend of Emerson and Thoreau, he developed his characteristic philosophy of self-culture through long Socratic conversations and in works such as Conversations with Children on the Gospels and Tablets. He served at the end of his life as the dean of the Concord School of Philosophy.