"Even the most devoted readers of nineteenth-century American literature often assume that the men and women behind the masterpieces were as dull and staid as the era's static daguerreotypes. Susan Cheever's latest work, however, brings new life to the well-known literary personages who produced such cherished works as The Scarlet Letter, Moby-Dick, Walden, and Little Women. Rendering in full color the tumultuous, often scandalous lives of these volatile and vulnerable geniuses, Cheever's dynamic narrative reminds us that, while these literary heroes now seem secure of their spots in the canon, they were once considered avant-garde, bohemian, types, at odds with the establishment." "Far from typically Victorian, this group of intellectuals, like their British Bloomsbury counterparts to whom the title refers, not only questioned established literary forms, but also resisted old moral and social strictures. Thoreau, of course, famously retreated to a plot of land on Walden Pond to escape capitalism, pick berries, and ponder nature. More shocking was the group's ambivalence toward the institution of marriage. Inclined to bend the rules of its bonds, many of its members spent time at the notorious commune, Brook Farm, and because liberal theories could not entirely guarantee against jealousy, the tension of real or imagined infidelities was always near the surface." "Susan Cheerer reacquaints us with the sexy, subversive side of Concord's nineteenth-century intellectuals, restoring in three dimensions the literary personalities whose work is at the heart of our national history and cultural identity."--BOOK JACKET.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [211]-214) and index.

1. Concord, Massachusetts 2. The Alcotts arrive for the first time 3. Louisa, girl interrupted 4. Louisa in love ... Henry David Thoreau 5. Sic Vita 6. Two loves 7. Ellen Sewall 8. Money 9. Emerson pays for everything 10. Two deaths 11. The curse of Salem 12. Hawthorne emerges 13. The execution 14. Another triangle 15. Bronson Alcott, peddler turned pedant 16. Fruitlands 17. Sex 18. Thoreau goes to New York City 19. Wall of fire 20. Walden pond 21. Margaret Fuller, the sexy muse 22. Rome 23. The Margaret ghost 24. Hawthorne leaves Salem forever 25. Stockbridge

26. Melville 27. The railroad 28. Community 29. Without Margaret 30. Louisa May Alcott returns 31. Louisa in Boston 32. Concord again 33. Walden, Walden 34. Thoreau now 35. Leaving Walden 36. The birth and death of Margaret Fuller 37. Shipwreck 38. The Hawthornes' return to concord 39. President Frank 40. Bayonets and bullets 41. Local martyr 42. The death of Thoreau 43. Louisa in Washington, D.C. 44. Return and illness 45. Hawthorne leaves concord 46. Death 47. Little women 48. Emerson and the fire Concord, today.