A. Bronson Alcott and Charles Lane, “Fruitlands” (July 1843)

Abstract AFTER THE FAILURE of the Temple School, Alcott moved to Concord. In 1842, with the financial help of Emerson and other friends, he visited Ham Common in Surrey, England, where a group of reformers had started a school based in large part on Alcott’s principles. When he returned in October 1842, some of the English reformers returned with him. Charles Lane (1800 —3 1870) joined Alcott in lecturing and in other reform activities, culminating in their decision to start a communal experiment. Land was found in Harvard, Massachusetts, eighteen miles from Concord, and in June 1843, the Alcotts, Lane and his son, and a few others moved in to what was called Fruitlands. The project was a failure: Alcott and Lane knew little about farming and were out lecturing most of the time, leaving the women to do the work; they were impractical in such matters as not wanting to use animals to do the plowing (forcing them into involuntary servitude) or eating eggs (robbing the chicken of her young); and Lane had an ascetic view of life that did not mesh with Mrs. Alcott’s. The community broke up in January 1844, in part because of Lane’s attempts to convert Bronson to celibacy and his wife’s refusal to go along. Lane left to join the nearby Shaker community, while Alcott suffered a nervous collapse. In 1846, Lane returned to England. Louisa May Alcott’s fictional account of Fruitlands is in her story “Transcendental Wild Oats” (1873).