Concord Writers

The Emerson family has been welcoming tourists since the mid-nineteenth century, when writer and lecturer Ralph Waldo Emerson personally greeted visitors in his study. Emerson’s house, at the Lexington Road and Cambridge Turnpike intersection, was convenient to the Boston stagecoach and remains today only a short walk away from the railroad depot. 

Henry David Thoreau loved springtime. While it’s true that he had something to say about every season, he seemed to wax more poetic not only in the spring but about the spring. When the earth came alive after a long cold winter, Thoreau’s observations came to life as well. 

“Little Women saved my life…twice.” The woman who uttered these amazing words as I was leaving Orchard House late one summer evening had just landed at Logan Airport from Korea and drove directly here. 

“There is snow in yonder cold gray sky of the morning! And, through the partially frosted window-panes, I love to watch the gradual beginning of the storm.” So writes Nathaniel Hawthorne in his sketch “Snowflakes,” one of many where the author takes his readers into the winter season. First published in 1838 and collected in the second volume of his Twice-Told Tales in 1842, the sketch describes everything from a winter storm (“reverently welcomed by me, her true-born son, be New England’s winter”) to a children’s snowball fight (“What pitched battles worthy to be chanted in Homeric strains!”) to the gloom of a winter burial (“Oh how dreary is a burial in winter, when the bosom of Mother Earth has no warmth for her poor child!”). No matter the season, it seems, Hawthorne’s thoughts were never too far from the grave.

Concord’s great tradition of writing lives on today. Here we highlight just two of the books published recently by Concordians: Alan Lightman’s Ada and the Galaxies, and Samantha Power’s The Education of an Idealist.

The Thoreau Society (thoreausociety.org) is a Concord-based organization with members all over the world. One of the most dedicated is Donna Marie Przybojewski, who teaches at St. Benedict Catholic School in Garfield Heights, Ohio. Five years ago, she set out to share her passion for the author of Walden—“not just [to] introduce Henry to children, but to help them develop a relationship with him.”

The result was “Saunter the Year with Henry David Thoreau,” a year-long, interdisciplinary curriculum for kindergarten through eighth grade students. (In the classroom she often appears in character as Henry, beard and all.) Resources for such an ambitious curriculum were scarce, so Donna Marie began writing and illustrating books for elementary and middle school readers, presenting vignettes of Thoreau’s life and describing his ideas in age-appropriate ways.

Although the setting of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women is Orchard House, The Wayside is where much of the action takes place. The Alcotts owned the property from 1845-1852, naming it Hillside. Because the house has been renovated many times since 1852, it is difficult to imagine how it appeared during the time of the Alcotts. Fortunately, because of the work of Margaret Lothrop and Minute Man National Historical Park, writings describe Hillside in detail, both inside and out. Another vital document by ten-year-old Elizabeth Sewall Alcott provides an eyewitness account of daily life at the home. Her record of the three years she lived there is her only surviving journal and provides another look at how the “little women” lived.

The debut of a new book by Concordian Gregory Maguire is always cause for celebration in our town. His best-selling books, including Wicked, A Wild Winter Swan, Hiddensee, and others are loved by readers around the world. 

This October, Gregory will launch a new spin-off sequel series, Another Day. Expanding on the characters we’ve come to love from his initial series, The Wicked Years (which included Wicked), the first in this series is The Brides of Maracoor, featuring Elphaba’s granddaughter and a few familiar faces from Oz—all in a fantastically new setting filled with a new and compelling cast of characters.

In the summer of 1842, Concord was like any other New England town. Sitting 18 miles west of Boston, the town of 2,000 souls was still very rural. The railroad wouldn’t come through for another two years, and there was no telegraph yet; only the daily stagecoach and the post office connected Concord to the rest of the world.  

In 1853, American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne crossed paths with the infamous clipper transport ship The Yorkshire. While the man and the ship led separate lives, each was entwined with the sea and their fates were destined to meet again years later in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s final hometown of Concord, Massachusetts. This is that story.