The Thought Read Round the World Quiz

Answer: Ralph Waldo Emerson

Poet, philosopher, minister and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) wrote "Concord Hymn" in recognition of the first military engagement of the American Revolution--the 1775 "shot heard 'round the world". Emerson was a strong lecturer and essayist, against slavery, and pro-individual. A leading Transcendentalist, he believed in the fundamental goodness of each person, the spiritual power of nature, and individual self-reliance. He believed we take the unbeaten path, but leave a trail for others, as the photo shows. He often went walking in the nearby Walden Woods belonging to Thoreau.

He and his 2nd wife Lidian reared a family in Concord, at a home they called "Bush". The Emersons entertained intellectual circles, including their close friends Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Bush became a National Historic Landmark.

Answer: Orchard House

As a child Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) was home schooled primarily by her Transcendentalist, education reform and orchard-growing father Amos Bronson. She frequented the impressive library of family friend Ralph Waldo Emerson. Though her family was poor and moved often Alcott lived in the Orchard House in Concord, Massachusetts from 1858 to 1877. "Little Women" was written and set there. Nathaniel Hawthorne lived next door, but was not social with the Alcott children. The Orchard House became a national landmark and tourist site.

Louisa was active in education, nursing, abolition and women's rights, as well as writing novels, short stories, plays and poetry. She never married, and died of a stroke at just 55, two days after her father passed (1888). The photo shows Concord grapes, developed in Concord, Massachusetts in 1849, and often found in a Massachusetts orchard.

Answer: Salem

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) bought the Concord, Massachusetts childhood home of Louisa May Alcott, irritating the family by changing its name. He lived next door to the Alcotts for 4 years, very close to authors Thoreau and Emerson, but he rarely joined the intellectual circles there, such that the Alcotts made a public issue of their hurt at his seeming rejection, calling Hawthorne peculiar and reclusive.

Hawthorne was living in Salem, Massachusetts when he was inspired by the Salem Witch Hunts of 1692 to write a novel about the devastation caused by intolerance and overly zealous righteousness. "The Scarlet Letter" was protested by the 1850 residents of Salem, causing Hawthorne to move from "this abominable city". Yet it sold out in ten days. The photo hint is about a victim of the witch hunts, Elizabeth Howe.

Hawthorne was friends with Melville, teaching the older author a "double meaning" technique, where a second story is hidden in the main story. Melville used this technique in "Moby Dick". But Hawthorne came to disagree with Melville's world views and brand of eccentricity.

As a boy Hawthorne lost his Captain father and his uncles to the sea, and he said this made him feel "without a root, yet continually longing for one". Fortunately Hawthorne met and courted the gifted painter Sophia Peabody. They were married in 1842, had three children, and lived happily until 1864 when Hawthorne died in his sleep. Hawthorne had written, "I do verily believe there is no sunshine in this world, except what beams from my wife's eyes".

Answer: Herman Melville

Called "slow in comprehension" by his father, Herman Melville (1819-1891) went to sea as a cabin boy in 1839. Setting out from the flourishing immigrant and whaling port of Bedford, Massachusetts, Melville's sea adventures became future books, short stories and poems. He wrote about mutiny, whaling and French Polynesian natives--most famously "Moby Dick". Melville moved to a small town in Massachusetts near the farm of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the two had many spiritual and literary discussions, much to the benefit of Melville. The photo shows a sunken ship, like those rammed by the mighty whale.

Still, in his lifetime there were few rewards for Melville's writing. He had nervous and physical ailments, and a short temper, such that some called him "mad". He did have a family however, was known to maintain high moral standards and had intense, almost mystical energy. He is buried in New York City, where he was born.

Answer: Nantucket

Nathaniel Philbrick is an American author born in Boston, 1956. He moved to Nantucket, Massachusetts in 1986, where he became a leading authority on the island history. His award-winning "In the Heart of the Sea" (2000) about the Essex, a whaling ship sunk by a sperm whale in 1821, retells the event which inspired Herman Melville's "Moby Dick". Director Ron Howard directed a film "In the Heart of the Sea" (2015) based on Philbrick's book.

The photo is a winter vineyard, like Nantucket's famous neighbor island, Martha's Vineyard.

Answer: Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was born in Boston, Massachusetts, lived there five months, and another five when he was 18, publishing his first work "Tamerlane and Other Poems" in Boston in 1827 and enlisting in the Army at Boston Harbor. He'd grown up in Virginia and in England but was back and gone again to Boston during his life, though he said he could only "despise and defy" the myopic and bad poets there who didn't appreciate Poe "stirring the heart" of his readers. Perhaps it's not surprising that it wasn't until 2014 the city of Boston installed a statue to claim and honor their native son: Poe with a raven by his side, his cape caught in the wind.

The photo hints at Poe's place as the inventor of the detective story.

Answer: The Perfect Storm

Filmmaker, award-winning journalist and an ABC News special correspondent, Sebastian Junger was born in Belmont, Massachusetts in 1962 and lives both there and in New York City. He wrote "The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea" (1997) about the Andrea Gail, a fishing vessel that left from Massachusetts in September, 1991, apparently encountered 30 foot (9.1 m) waves and strong winds, and did not make it home.

Hollywood portrayed the story in "A Perfect Storm". The photo is of market fish, a hint of the great fishing tradition of the Massachusetts coast, and the Andrea Gail, a brave fishing boat hunting swordfish.

Answer: Boston

Author Robert B. Parker (1932-2010) wrote 40 novels about his enduring character, private eye Spenser who, like Parker himself, lived in Boston, Massachusetts with a longtime romantic partner and his dog named Pearl.

Parker broke with tradition by giving his hard-boiled detective both a consistent long-term relationship, and a beat in an upscale neighborhood. He said he set Spenser in Boston because the city was familiar. He mixes in real and made-up places and events, always careful "not to bad-mouth" any real Boston places or residents. After Parker's death at age 77 his estate and publishers continued to publish detective Spenser stories, written by various authors.

The photo hints at a Boston marathon runner wearing traditional Irish green.

Answer: Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom

John Hoyer Updike (1932-2009) began his esteemed writing career as a teen in Pennsylvania, at Harvard in Boston, at Oxford in England and then in New York City. In the 1960s he moved his family to Ipswich, Massachusetts, and spent his final 30 years with his 2nd wife in the nearby oceanside community of Beverly Farms. "Rabbit, Run" (1960) introduces us to Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, an everyday American and former basketball player in his mid-twenties. Updike won a Pulitzer Prize for two novels in the series, "Rabbit is Rich" (1981) and "Rabbit at Rest" (1991), which take us through the ordinary and distressing life and death of Harry. Updike struggled with the changes he saw in American society, the loss of religion, small town and middle-class infidelity, and other everyday family and social issues.

Chris Van Allsburg, an award-winning book illustrator for "Jumanji" (1981) and "The Polar Express" (1985) among others, roomed with Updike at Harvard, and also lived in Beverly Farms, Massachusetts, which had been a favorite vacation spot of President Taft.

Answer: Writing improper for a woman

Born into upper class society in New York City as Edith Newbold Jones, Edith Wharton (1862-1937) died in France at age 75, but said her happiest years were spent in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts. There she had designed and lived in a mansion she called The Mount.

As a child Wharton was well traveled in Europe, but nearly died of typhoid fever contracted in Germany. She published her first writing, a poem, at age fifteen, but under a male friend's name, as writing was believed improper for a girl. She thereafter published anonymously on occasion, but was expected to focus on the obligations of a wealthy female socialite.

In 1901 just after her mother died, with her gentleman husband spiraling into mental illness, Wharton needed respite. At The Mount she produced "The House of Mirth" and many other writings. She was able to use her excellent interior design, home building and garden design skills at this property. She divorced her husband, who had become incurably insane, and in 1911 sold her "first true home", and moved to Paris. In 1921 she was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, for her 12th novel, "Age of Innocence". She was also nominated three times for the Nobel prize in literature.