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Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was an American essayist, philosopher, poet, and leader of the Transcendentalist movement in the early 19th century. His teachings directly influenced the growing New Thought movement of the mid 1800s.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Era19th century philosophy
RegionWestern Philosophy
SchoolTranscendentalism

Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, Nature. As a result of this ground breaking work he gave a speech entitled The American Scholar in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. considered to be America's "Intellectual Declaration of Independence".[1] Emerson once said "Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you."

Considered one of the great orators of the time, Emerson's enthusiasm and respect for his audience enraptured crowds. His support for abolitionism late in life created controversy, and at times he was subject to abuse from crowds while speaking on the topic, however this was not always the case. When asked to sum up his work, he said his central doctrine was "the infinitude of the private man."

Biography

Early life, family, and education

Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts on May 25, 1803,[2] son of Ruth Haskins and the Rev. William Emerson, a Unitarian minister who descended from a well-known line of ministers.[3] Their son was named after the mother's brother Ralph and the father's great-grandmother Rebecca Waldo.[4] Ralph Waldo was the second of five sons who survived into adulthood; the others were William, Edward, Robert Bulkeley, and Charles.[5] Three other children—Phebe, John Clarke, and Mary Caroline—all died in childhood.[5]

The young Ralph Waldo Emerson's father died from stomach cancer on May 12, 1811, less than two weeks short of Emerson's eighth birthday.[6] Emerson was raised by his mother as well as other intellectual and spiritual women in his family, including his aunt Mary Moody Emerson, who had a profund impact on the young Emerson.[7] She lived with the family off and on and maintained a constant correspondence with Emerson until her death in 1863.[8]

Emerson's formal schooling began at the Boston Latin School in 1812 when he was nine.[9] In October 1817, at 14, Emerson went to Harvard College and was appointed freshman messenger for the president, requiring Emerson to fetch delinquent students and send messages to faculty.[10] Midway through his junior year, Emerson began keeping a list of books he had read and started a journal in a series of notebooks that would be called "Wide World".[11] He took outside jobs to cover his school expenses, including as a waiter for the Junior Commons and as an occasional teacher working with his uncle Samuel in Waltham, Massachusetts.[12] By his senior year, Emerson decided to go by his middle name, Waldo.[13] Emerson served as Class Poet and, as was custom, presented an original poem on Harvard's Class Day, a month before his official graduation on August 29, 1821, when he was 18.[14] He did not stand out as a student and graduated in the exact middle of his class of 59 people.[15]

Early career

After Harvard, Emerson assisted his brother in a school for young ladies[16] established in their mother's house, after he had established his own school in Chelmsford, Massachusetts; when his brother went to Göttingen to study divinity, Emerson took charge of the school. Over the next several years, Emerson made his living as a schoolmaster, then went to Harvard Divinity School. In May 1828, Emerson's younger brother William, who had been working with lawyer Daniel Webster, had to be sent to McLean Asylum.[17]

Boston's Second Church invited Emerson to serve as its junior pastor and he was ordained on March 11, 1829.[18] Emerson met his first wife, Ellen Louisa Tucker, in Concord, New Hampshire and married her when she was 18.[19] The couple moved to Boston, with Emerson's mother Ruth moving with them to help take care of Ellen, who was already sick with tuberculosis.[20] Less than two years later, Ellen died at the age of 20 on February 8, 1831, after uttering her last words: "I have not forgot the peace and joy".[21] Emerson was heavily affected by her death and often visited her grave.[22] In a journal entry dated March 29, 1831, Emerson wrote, "I visited Ellen's tomb and opened the coffin".[23] After his wife's death, he began to disagree with the church's methods, writing in his journal in June 1832: "I have sometimes thought that, in order to be a good minister, it was necessary to leave the ministry. The profession is antiquated. In an altered age, we worship in the dead forms of our forefathers".[24] His disagreements with church officials over the administration of the Communion service and misgivings about public prayer eventually led to his resignation in 1832. As he wrote, "This mode of commemorating Christ is not suitable to me. That is reason enough why I should abandon it".[25]

Emerson toured Europe in 1832 and later wrote of his travels in English Traits (1856).[26] He left aboard the brig Jasper on Christmas day, sailing first to Malta.[27] During his European trip, he met William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Stuart Mill, and Thomas Carlyle. Carlyle in particular was a strong influence on Emerson; Emerson would later serve as an unofficial literary agent in the United States for Carlyle. The two would maintain correspondence until Carlyle's death in 1881.[28]

Emerson returned to the United States on October 9, 1833, and lived with his mother in Newton, Massachusetts until November 1834, when he moved to Concord, Massachusetts to live with his step-grandfather Dr. Ezra Ripley at what was later named The Old Manse.[29] In 1835, he bought a house on the Cambridge and Concord Turnpike in Concord, Massachusetts, now open to the public as the Ralph Waldo Emerson House,[30] and quickly became one of the leading citizens in the town. He married his second wife Lydia Jackson in her home town of Plymouth, Massachusetts on September 14, 1835.[31] He called her Lidian and she called him Mr. Emerson.[32] Their children were Waldo, Ellen, Edith, and Edward Waldo Emerson. Ellen was named for his first wife, at Lidian's suggestion.[33]

Emerson lived a financially conservative lifestyle.[34] He had inherited some wealth after his wife's death, though he brought a lawsuit against the Tucker family in 1836 to get it.[35] He received $11,674.79 in July 1837.[36] Around this time, he had enough money to pay the rent of his neighbor Bronson Alcott.[34]

Literary career

 
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson and other like-minded intellectuals founded the Transcendental Club, which served as a center for the movement. Its first official meeting was held on September 19, 1836.[37] Emerson anonymously published his first essay, Nature, in September 1836. A year later, on August 31, 1837, Emerson delivered his now-famous Phi Beta Kappa address, "The American Scholar",[38] then known as "An Oration, Delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge"; it was renamed for a collection of essays in 1849.[39] In the speech, Emerson declared literary independence in the United States and urged Americans to create a writing style all their own and free from Europe.[40] James Russell Lowell, who was a student at Harvard at the time, called it, "an event without former parallel on our literary annals".[41]

In 1837, Emerson befriended Henry David Thoreau. Though they had likely met as early as 1835, in the fall of 1837, Emerson asked Thoreau, "Do you keep a journal?" The question went on to have a lifelong inspiration for Thoreau.[42]

On July 15, 1838,[43] Emerson was invited to Divinity Hall, Harvard Divinity School for the school's graduation address, which came to be known as his Divinity School Address. Emerson discounted Biblical miracles and proclaimed that, while Jesus was a great man, he was not God: historical Christianity, he said, had turned Jesus into a "demigod, as the Orientals or the Greeks would describe Osiris or Apollo".[44] His comments outraged the establishment and the general Protestant community. For this, he was denounced as an atheist,[44] and a poisoner of young men's minds. Despite the roar of critics, he made no reply, leaving others to put forward a defense. He was not invited back to speak at Harvard for another thirty years,[45] but by the mid-1880s his position had become standard Unitarian doctrine.

The Transcendental group began to publish its flagship journal, The Dial, in July 1840.[46] They planned the journal as early as October of 1839, but work did not begin until the first week of 1840.[47] Ripley was its managing editor[48] and Margaret Fuller was its first editor, having been hand-chosen by Emerson after several others had declined the role.[49] Fuller stayed on for about two years and Emerson took over, utilizing the journal to promote talented young writers including William Ellery Channing and Thoreau.[42] It ceased publication in April 1844; Horace Greeley reported it as an end to the "most original and thoughtful periodical ever published in this country".[50]

In January 1842, Emerson's first son Waldo died from scarlet fever.[51] Emerson wrote of his grief in the poem "Threnody" ("For this losing is true dying"),[52] and the essay "Experience". In the same year, William James was born, and Emerson agreed to be his godfather.

Emerson made a living as a popular lecturer in New England and the rest of the country outside of the South. During several scheduled appearances he was not able to make, Frederick Douglass took his place. Emerson spoke on a wide variety of subjects. Many of his essays grew out of his lectures. He charged between $10 and $50 for each appearance, bringing him about $800 to $1,000 per year.[53] His earnings allowed him to expand his property, buying eleven acres of land by Walden Pond and a few more acres in a neighboring pine grove. He wrote that he was "landlord and waterlord of 14 acres, more or less".[54]

In 1845, Emerson's journals show he was reading the Bhagavad Gita and Henry Thomas Colebrooke's Essays on the Vedas.[55] Emerson was strongly influenced by the Vedas, and much of his writing has strong shades of nondualism. One of the clearest examples of this can be found in his essay "The Over-soul":

We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.[56]

Emerson was introduced to Indian philosophy when reading the works of French philosopher Victor Cousin.[57]

In February 1852, Emerson and James Freeman Clarke and William Henry Channing edited an edition of the works and letters of Margaret Fuller, who had died in 1850.[58] Within a week of her death, her New York editor Horace Greeley suggested to Emerson that a biography of Fuller, to be called Margaret and Her Friends, be prepared quickly "before the interest excited by her sad decease has passed away".[59] Published with the title The Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli,[60] Fuller's words were heavily censored or rewritten.[61] The three editors were not concerned about accuracy; they believed public interest in Fuller was temporary and that she would not survive as a historical figure.[62] Even so, for a time, it was the best-selling biography of the decade and went through thirteen editions before the end of the century.[60]

Walt Whitman published the innovative poetry collection Leaves of Grass in 1855 and sent a copy to Emerson for his opinion. Emerson responded positively, sending a flattering five-page letter as a response.[63] Emerson's approval helped the first edition of Leaves of Grass stir up significant interest[64] and convinced Whitman to issue a second edition shortly thereafter.[65] This edition quoted a phrase from Emerson's letter, printed in gold leaf on the cover: "I Greet You at the Beginning of a Great Career".[66] Emerson took offense that this letter was made public[67] and later became more critical of the work.[68]

Civil War years

Though Emerson was anti-slavery, he did not immediately become active in the abolitionist movement. He voted for Abraham Lincoln in 1860, but Emerson was disappointed that Lincoln was more concerned about preserving the Union than eliminating slavery outright.[69] Once the American Civil War broke out, Emerson made it clear that he believed in immediate emancipation of the slaves.[70] Emerson gave a public lecture in Washington, D.C. on January 31, 1862, and declared: "The South calls slavery an institution... I call it destitution... Emancipation is the demand of civilization".[71] The next day, February 1, his friend Charles Sumner took him to meet Lincoln at the White House; his misgivings about Lincoln began to soften after this meeting.[72]

On May 6, 1862, Emerson's protege Henry David Thoreau died of tuberculosis at the age of 44 and Emerson delivered his eulogy. Emerson would continuously refer to Thoreau as his best friend,[73] despite a falling out that began in 1849 after Thoreau published A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.[74] Another friend, Nathaniel Hawthorne, died two years after Thoreau in 1864. Emerson served as one of the pallbearers as Hawthorne was buried in Concord as Emerson wrote, "in a pomp of sunshine and verdure".[75]

Final years and death

 
Emerson's grave in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery

Beginning as early as the summer of 1871 or in the spring of 1872, Emerson was losing his memory[76] and suffered from aphasia.[77] By the end of the decade, he forgot his own name at times and, when anyone asked how he felt, he responded, "Quite well; I have lost my mental faculties, but am perfectly well".[78]

Emerson's Concord home caught fire on July 24, 1872; Emerson called for help from neighbors and, giving up on putting out the flames, all attempted to save as many objects as possible.[79] The fire was put out by Ephraim Bull, Jr., the one-armed son of Ephraim Wales Bull.[80] Donations were collected by friends to help the Emersons rebuild, including $5,000 gathered by Francis Cabot Lowell, another $10,000 collected by LeBaron Russell Briggs, and a personal donation of $1,000 from George Bancroft.[81] Support for shelter was offered as well; though the Emersons ended up staying with family at the Old Manse, invitations came from Anne Lynch Botta, James Elliot Cabot, James Thomas Fields and Annie Adams Fields.[82] The fire marked an end to Emerson's serious lecturing career; from then on, he would lecture only on special occasions and only in front of familiar audiences.[83]

While the house was being rebuilt, Emerson took a trip to England, the main European continent, and Egypt. He left on October 23, 1872, along with his daughter Ellen[84] while his wife Lidian spent time at the Old Manse and with friends.[85] Emerson and his daughter Ellen returned to the United States on the ship Olympus along with friend Charles Eliot Norton on April 15, 1873.[86] Emerson's return to Concord was celebrated by the town and school was canceled that day.[77]

In late 1874, Emerson published an anthology of poetry called Parnassus, which included poems by Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Julia Caroline Dorr, Jean Ingelow, Lucy Larcom, Jones Very, as well as Thoreau and several others.[87] The anthology was originally prepared as early as the fall of 1871 but was delayed when the publishers asked for revisions.[88]

The problems with his memory had become embarrassing to Emerson and he ceased his public appearances by 1879. As Holmes wrote, "Emerson is afraid to trust himself in society much, on account of the failure of his memory and the great difficulty he finds in getting the words he wants. It is painful to witness his embarrassment at times".[78]

On April 19, 1882, Emerson went walking despite having an apparent cold and was caught in a sudden rain shower. Two days later, he was diagnosed with pneumonia.[89] He died on April 27, 1882. Emerson is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, Massachusetts.[90] He was placed in his coffin wearing a white robe given by American sculptor Daniel Chester French.[91]

Lifestyle and beliefs

Emerson's religious views were often considered radical at the time. He believed that all things are connected to God and, therefore, all things are divine.[92] Critics believed that Emerson was removing the central God figure; as Henry Ware, Jr. said, Emerson was in danger of taking away "the Father of the Universe" and leaving "but a company of children in an orphan asylum".[93] Emerson was partly influenced by German philosophy and Biblical criticism.[94]

Emerson did not become an ardent abolitionist until later in his life, though his journals show he was concerned with slavery beginning in his youth. When he was young, he even dreamed about helping to free slaves, though he was not a strong public abolitionist voice at the time. In June 1856, shortly after Charles Sumner, a United States Senator, was beaten for his staunch abolitionist views, Emerson lamented that he himself was not as committed to the cause. He wrote, "There are men who as soon as they are born take a bee-line to the axe of the inquisitor... Wonderful the way in which we are saved by this unfailing supply of the moral element".[95] After Sumner's attack, Emerson began to speak out about slavery. "I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom", he said at a meeting at Concord that summer.[96] Later in his life, Emerson used slavery as an example of a human injustice, especially in his role as a minister. In early 1838, provoked by the murder of an abolitionist publisher from Alton, Illinois named Elijah Parish Lovejoy, Emerson gave his first public antislavery address. As he said, "It is but the other day that the brave Lovejoy gave his breast to the bullets of a mob, for the rights of free speech and opinion, and died when it was better not to live".[95] John Quincy Adams said the mob-murder of Lovejoy "sent a shock as of any earthquake throughout this continent".[97] However, Emerson maintained that reform would be achieved through moral agreement rather than by militant action. By August 1, 1844, at a lecture in Concord, he stated more clearly his support for the abolitionist movement. He stated, "we are indebted mainly to this movement, and to the continuers of it, for the popular discussion of every point of practical ethics".[98]

There is evidence suggesting that Emerson was bisexual.[99] During early years at Harvard, he found himself 'strangely attracted' to a young freshman named Josh Gay about whom he wrote sexually charged poetry.[100][101] Gay would be only the first of his infatuations and interests, with Nathaniel Hawthorne numbered among them.[102]

Criticism and legacy

Herman Melville, who had met Emerson in 1849, originally thought the Concord Sage had "a defect in the region of the heart" and a "self-conceit so intensely intellectual that at first one hesitates to call it by its right name", though he later admitted Emerson was "a great man".[103]

In his book The American Religion, Harold Bloom repeatedly refers to Emerson as "The prophet of the American Religion," which in the context of the book refers to indigenously American and gnostic-tinged religions such as Mormonism, Christian Science, and Seventh Day Adventism that arose largely in Emerson's lifetime.

In May 2006, 168 years after Emerson delivered his "Divinity School Address," Harvard Divinity School announced the establishment of the Emerson Unitarian Universalist Association Professorship.[104] Harvard has also named a building, Emerson Hall (1900), after him.[105]

Selected works

Collections

Essays

Poems

See also

Further reading

  • Deming, Richard (2008). Listening on All Sides: Toward an Emersonian Ethics of Reading. Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-5738-0.
  • Strunk, William (2006). The Classics of Style. The American Academic Press. ISBN 0-9787282-0-3. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  • Soressi, B. (2004). Ralph Waldo Emerson (in Italian). Armando. ISBN 88-8358-585-2. with preface by A. Ferrara
  • Mariani, G. (2004). Mariani, G.; Di Loreto, S.; Martinez, C.; Scannavini, A.; Tattoni, I.; (ed.). Emerson at 200 Proceedings of the International Bicentennial Conference (Rome, 16-18 October 2003). Aracne. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link)
  • Geldard, Richard G. (2001). Spiritual Teachings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Lindisfarne Books. ISBN 0-9402625-9-2. with introduction by Robert Richardson
  • Whicher, Stephen E. (1950). Freedom and Fate. An Inner Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Univ of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0-8122704-5-2. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
  • Thurin, Erik (1981). Emerson As Priest of Pan: A Study in the Metaphysics of Sex. Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas. ISBN 0-7006021-6-X.

Notes

  1. ^ Cheever, 80
  2. ^ Sullivan, 3
  3. ^ Cheever, 76
  4. ^ McAleer, 12
  5. ^ a b Baker, 3
  6. ^ McAleer, 40
  7. ^ Richardson, 22–23
  8. ^ Baker, 35
  9. ^ McAleer, 44
  10. ^ McAleer, 52
  11. ^ Richardson, 11
  12. ^ McAleer, 53
  13. ^ Richardson, 6
  14. ^ McAleer, 61
  15. ^ Buell, 13
  16. ^ McAleer, 66
  17. ^ Baker, 5
  18. ^ Packer, 36–37
  19. ^ Cheever, 78
  20. ^ McAleer, 105
  21. ^ Richardson, 108
  22. ^ Cheever, 79
  23. ^ Baker, 11
  24. ^ Sullivan, 6
  25. ^ Packer, 39
  26. ^ McAleer, 132
  27. ^ Baker, 23
  28. ^ Packer, 40
  29. ^ Sullivan, 8
  30. ^ Wilson, Susan. Literary Trail of Greater Boston. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000: 127. ISBN 0-618-05013-2
  31. ^ Sullivan, 9
  32. ^ Richardson, 192
  33. ^ Baker, 86
  34. ^ a b Cheever, 86
  35. ^ Cheever, 82
  36. ^ McAleer, 108
  37. ^ Baker, 53
  38. ^ Sullivan, 13
  39. ^ Buell, 45
  40. ^ Watson, Peter. Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud. New York: Harper Perennial, 2005: 688. ISBN 978-0-06-093564-1
  41. ^ Mowat, R. B. The Victorian Age. London: Senate, 1995: 83. ISBN 1-85958-161-8
  42. ^ a b Buell, 121
  43. ^ Packer, 73
  44. ^ a b Buell, 161
  45. ^ Sullivan, 14
  46. ^ Gura, 129
  47. ^ Von Mehren, 120
  48. ^ Slater, Abby. In Search of Margaret Fuller. New York: Delacorte Press, 1978: 61–62. ISBN 0-440-03944-4
  49. ^ Gura, 128–129
  50. ^ Gura, 130
  51. ^ Cheever, 93
  52. ^ McAleer, 313
  53. ^ Sullivan, 16
  54. ^ Packer, 150
  55. ^ Sachin N. Pradhan, India in the United States: Contribution of India and Indians in the United States of America, Bethesda, MD: SP Press International, Inc., 1996, p 12.
  56. ^ The Over-Soul from Essays: First Series (1841)
  57. ^ Richardson, 114
  58. ^ Baker, 321
  59. ^ Von Mehren, 340
  60. ^ a b Von Mehren, 343
  61. ^ Blanchard, Paula. Margaret Fuller: From Transcendentalism to Revolution. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1987: 339. ISBN 0-201-10458-X
  62. ^ Von Mehren, 342
  63. ^ Kaplan, 203
  64. ^ Callow, Philip. From Noon to Starry Night: A Life of Walt Whitman. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1992: 232. ISBN 0929587952
  65. ^ Miller, James E., Jr. Walt Whitman. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc. 1962: 27.
  66. ^ Reynolds, David S. Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography. New York: Vintage Books, 1995: 352. ISBN 0679767096.
  67. ^ Callow, Philip. From Noon to Starry Night: A Life of Walt Whitman. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1992: 236. ISBN 0929587952.
  68. ^ Reynolds, David S. Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography. New York: Vintage Books, 1995: 343. ISBN 0679767096.
  69. ^ McAleer, 569–570
  70. ^ Richardson, 547
  71. ^ Baker, 433
  72. ^ McAleer, 570
  73. ^ Richardson, 548
  74. ^ Packer, 193
  75. ^ Baker, 448
  76. ^ Baker, 502
  77. ^ a b Richardson, 569
  78. ^ a b McAleer, 629
  79. ^ Richardson, 566
  80. ^ Baker, 504
  81. ^ Baker, 506
  82. ^ McAleer, 613
  83. ^ Richardson, 567
  84. ^ Richardson, 568
  85. ^ Baker, 507
  86. ^ McAleer, 618
  87. ^ Richardson, 570
  88. ^ Baker, 497
  89. ^ Richardson, 572
  90. ^ Sullivan, 25
  91. ^ McAleer, 662
  92. ^ Richardson, 538
  93. ^ Buell, 165
  94. ^ Packer, 23
  95. ^ a b McAleer, 531
  96. ^ Packer, 232
  97. ^ Richardson, 269
  98. ^ Lowance, Mason (2000). Against Slavery: An Abolitionist Reader. Penguin Classics. pp. p. 301-302. ISBN 0140437584. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  99. ^ Shand-Tucci, Douglas (2003). The Crimson Letter. New York: St Martens Press. pp. 15–16. ISBN 0-312-19896-5.
  100. ^ Kaplan, 248
  101. ^ Richardson, 9
  102. ^ Kaplan, 249
  103. ^ Sullivan, 123
  104. ^ "Emerson Unitarian Universalist Association Professorship Established at Harvard Divinity School" (Press release). Harvard Divinity School. May 2006. Retrieved 2007-02-22.
  105. ^ Department of Philosophy of Harvard University

Sources

  • Baker, Carlos. Emerson Among the Eccentrics: A Group Portrait. New York: Viking Press, 1996. ISBN 0-670-86675-X.
  • Buell, Lawrence. Emerson. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-674-01139-2.
  • Cheever, Susan. American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau; Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work. Detroit: Thorndike Press, 2006. ISBN 078629521X.
  • Gura, Philip F. American Transcendentalism: A History. New York: Hill and Wang, 2007. ISBN 978-0-8090-3477-2.
  • Kaplan, Justin. Walt Whitman: A Life. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979. ISBN 0671225421
  • McAleer, John. Ralph Waldo Emerson: Days of Encounter. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1984. ISBN 0316553417.
  • Packer, Barbara L. The Transcendentalists. Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 2007. ISBN 9780820329581.
  • Richardson, Robert D. Jr. Emerson: The Mind on Fire. Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1995. ISBN 0-520-08808-5.
  • Sullivan, Wilson. New England Men of Letters. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1972. ISBN 0027886808.
  • Von Mehren, Joan. Minerva and the Muse: A Life of Margaret Fuller. Amherst, Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994. ISBN 1-55849-015-9
 
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