DESTINATION: CONCORD, MASS. : Louisa May Alcott Slept Here : As Did Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Other American Literary Lights

For literature lovers, this lovely historic town about 20 miles northwest of Boston offers an embarrassment of riches. Louisa May Alcott; her father, Amos Bronson Alcott; Henry David Thoreau; Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Nathaniel Hawthorne all lived and wrote and exchanged ideas in Concord, that hotbed of 19th-Century Transcendentalism.

Preserved as museums and open to the public are Orchard House, the family home of the Alcotts and the setting for Louisa May’s children’s classic, “Little Women”; the Wayside, a rambling house next door that was also home to the Alcotts and, later, Hawthorne; Emerson House, the home of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the Old Manse, a magnificent 18th-Century structure where both Emerson and Hawthorne lived for a time.

And, of course, there is Walden Pond, the inspiration for Thoreau’s seminal work “Walden,” which lures thousands of visitors every year to the site where the writer lived simply in a cabin from 1845 to 1847.

Concord has been rocked by the efforts of Don Henley and his musician pals to save Walden Woods--the woodlands surrounding Walden Pond--from development. But for the most part, Concord is remarkably intact as a historic site, succumbing neither to touristy kitsch nor to numbing 20th-Century overdevelopment and commercialism.

Among Concord’s many unspoiled sites is Author’s Ridge in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, where the town’s literary lights--Louisa May Alcott, Emerson, Thoreau and Hawthorne--are buried.

Of course, a century before Thoreau went to the woods “to live deliberately,” Concord and nearby Lexington earned estimable places in American history. It was at the Old North Bridge in Concord (today a historic site) where the “shot heard ‘round the world” signaled the start of the American Revolution on April 19, 1775.

If the visitor plans carefully, all four literary houses can be toured in a day. (Days and hours vary for each. Only Orchard House is open year-round, but all of the houses can be visited through the end of October.)

Louisa May Alcott, who could be less than reverential about Concord, nicknamed Orchard House “Apple Slump.” Alcott was a grown woman of 26 in 1858, when her family moved into the property, two 18th-Century houses her father had joined together.

Orchard House served as the setting for Louisa May’s most famous and enduring work, “Little Women,” an idealization of her own family, published in two volumes (1868-69). (The four adolescent March daughters were modeled on the four Alcott girls, and fiercely independent tomboy Jo--every little girl’s favorite March daughter--was Louisa’s fictional rendition of herself.)

The Alcotts struggled with poverty. Bronson Alcott, a philosopher, writer and educator who was considered brilliant by some, a flake by others, was unable to support his family. The burden fell on Louisa, and with the great success of “Little Women” (which she was reluctant to write) and subsequent volumes such as “Little Men,” the second-oldest Alcott daughter--who never married--became famous and financially comfortable.

One of the pleasant surprises at Orchard House, furnished with Alcott family pieces, is the wealth of artwork by May Alcott, the youngest daughter. Take note of the owl she painted on the wall in Louisa’s room right above the fireplace (also don’t miss the writing desk Bronson built for his writer daughter). And May’s room is charming, decorated as it is by sketches of classical scenes the young artist drew right on her bedroom walls.

In 1879, two years after the Alcotts moved out of Orchard House, Bronson Alcott founded the Concord School of Philosophy on the hillside behind the house. It still stands.

More than a decade before Bronson Alcott bought Orchard House, he moved his then-young family into a small, circa-1700 farmhouse in Concord that he dubbed “Hillside.” Alcott enlarged the house, which his family lived in from 1845 to 1848.

Today the house is known as the “home of authors,” and the informative tour leads visitors through several centuries of Concord literary and architectural history.

Nathaniel Hawthorne bought the house--which he renamed “the Wayside,” a name that stuck--from Bronson Alcott in 1852. The Hawthornes’ chief contribution to the house is a bizarre tower study built for the author of “The Scarlet Letter.”

The next of the authors to live at the Wayside was Harriet Lothrop, who wrote the Five Little Peppers books under the pen name Margaret Sidney. The Lothrop family lived in the Wayside from 1883 to 1965, and the house was left to the National Park Service with its original furnishings, including some Alcott and Hawthorne family pieces.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, essayist and poet (including “The Concord Hymn”), was the leading spokesman of the Transcendental movement, which believed in the mystical unity of nature and emphasized individualism, self-reliance and rejection of traditional authority. One of Emerson’s disciples was Thoreau, who lived in Emerson’s home from 1841 to 1843, before spiriting himself away to Walden Pond.

The Alcotts were admirers and friends of Emerson (Bronson being a fellow Transcendentalist), and Louisa May idolized him.

Emerson lived in this sturdy white house with his second wife and children from 1835 until his death in 1882; it is furnished with Emerson family pieces and preserved very much as it was at the time of Emerson’s death. (The contents and furnishings of Emerson’s study are now housed in the Concord Museum across the street, but the study in the house has been re-created to look as it did when Emerson was alive.)

Many of Emerson’s personal effects are on display, including his walking sticks and gowns he wore on his famous lecture tours.

The handsome, stately Old Manse is a monument to Concord’s dual historical legacy--both Revolutionary and literary. It was built in 1770 by the Rev. William Emerson, Ralph Waldo’s grandfather. No doubt the inhabitants of the house heard the famous shots fired in 1775 at Old North Bridge, just across a field.

Emerson lived in the house with his mother from 1834 to 1835, until he married Lydia Jackson and moved into a home on the Cambridge Turnpike. (Emerson wrote his Transcendentalist essay “Nature” in the Old Manse’s study during this period.)

But a much stronger literary association belongs to Nathaniel Hawthorne, who rented the Old Manse from then-owner Samuel Ripley for the first three blissful years (1842-45) of his marriage to Sophia Peabody. Here Hawthorne wrote “Mosses From an Old Manse,” and here the happy newlyweds scratched inscriptions (using Sophia’s diamond) into the windowpanes. Hawthorne enjoyed friendships with Emerson and Thoreau while living in Concord. After returning for a time to Hawthorne’s native Salem, Mass., the Hawthornes moved back to Concord in 1852 and lived in the Wayside. Hawthorne died in 1864.

GUIDEBOOK

Authors’ Abodes

Getting there: Fly nonstop from LAX to Boston on American, United and Northwest and direct (with at least one stop but no change of planes) on Delta. Lowest round-trip fares start at about $450. Rent a car in Boston and drive about 30 minutes northwest to Concord.

Literary houses: Call for hours and admission fees.

Concord Museum, 200 Lexington Road, Concord, Mass. 01742; telephone (508) 369-9609.

Emerson House, 28 Cambridge Turnpike, Concord, Mass. 01742; tel. (508) 369-2236.

Old Manse, Monument Street, Concord, Mass. 01742; tel. (508) 369-3909.

Orchard House, 399 Lexington Road, Concord, Mass. 01742; tel. (508) 369-4118.

Wayside, 455 Lexington Road, Concord, Mass. 01742; tel. (508) 369-6975.

For more information: Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism, 100 Cambridge St., Boston 02202; tel. (617) 727-3201.