Louisa M Alcott

Bronson Alcott's Fruitlands Louisa M Alcott

The following account of the Fruitlands Community is largely a compilation of writings regarding it by eye-witnesses and those in close touch with its members. This is the surest way of forming a just estimate of the experiment and the characters involved. Mr. Frank B. Sanborn, in his book entitled "Bronson Alcott," describes in a few short sentences the circumstances which led up to the formation of the Community, and this is what he says: - "James Pierrepont Greaves was an Englishman born in 1777, who at the age of forty went to reside in Switzerland with Pestalozzi, for four years, and there adopted, a few years before young Alcott did, the chief ideas of Pestalozzi, as to the training of children. Returning to England in 1825, he gradually formed a circle of mystics and reformers, in London and its vicinity, 2who were, like himself, interested in the early instruction and training of children