(Amos Bronson Alcott)ôlˈkət, ăl–, –kŏt, 1799–1888, American advocate of educational and social reform, b. near Wolcott, Conn. His meager formal education was supplemented by omnivorous reading, while he gained a living from farming, working in a clock factory, and as a peddler in the South. He taught in several places before he opened (1834) his Temple School in Boston. His own records, as well as those made by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, his assistant, show his concern with the integrated mental, physical, and spiritual development of the child. Yet unfavorable reactions to his advanced and liberal theories forced him to close his school. His disappointment was lessened when he learned of the success of Alcott House, a school founded by his disciples in England. One of the leading exponents of transcendentalism, he wrote for the periodical Dial (the "Orphic Sayings" being his most famous contribution) and was a nonresident member of Brook Farm. He was one of the founders (1843) of a cooperative vegetarian community, "Fruitlands," near Harvard, Mass., but it was abandoned in 1844. Poverty continually plagued the life of the Alcotts until the writings of his daughter, Louisa May Alcott, relieved the family of financial worry. He became superintendent of the Concord public schools, whose reformation he described in his Reports. From 1879 he was dean of the Concord School of Philosophy, which annually gathered disciples to hear him and many other speakers. Among his writings are Observations on the Principles and Methods of Infant Instruction (1830), Record of a School (1835), and Ralph Waldo Emerson (1882).

See his journals (ed. by O. Shepard, 1938, repr. 1966) and his letters (ed. by R. L. Herrinstadt, 1969); biographies by F. B. Sanborn (1893, repr. 1965) and D. McCuskey (1969); study by G. E. Haefner (1970); O. Shepard, Pedlar's Progress (1937, repr. 1967).

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