- Transcendental Club
The Transcendental Club was the group of
New England intellectuals of the early-to-mid-19th century which gave rise toTranscendentalism .Overview
The club was established in the
Boston, Massachusetts home ofGeorge Ripley , onSeptember 8 ,1836 , byFrederick Henry Hedge ,Ralph Waldo Emerson ,Orestes Brownson ,Bronson Alcott ,James Freeman Clarke , andConvers Francis . Other regular male members includedWilliam Henry Channing (whose uncle Dr.William Ellery Channing also attended once),Theodore Parker ,Christopher Pearse Cranch ,John Sullivan Dwight ,Cyrus Bartol , andCaleb Stetson ; the group's female members includedSophia Ripley ,Margaret Fuller , andElizabeth Peabody .The Transcendental Club was given its name by the public and not by its participants.
James Elliot Cabot , a biographer of Emerson, wrote of it as "the occasional meetings of a changing body of liberal thinkers, agreeing in nothing but their liberality".Gura, Philip F. "American Transcendentalism: A History". New York: Hill and Wang, 2007: 5. ISBN 0-8090-3477-8] Hedge wrote: "There was no club in the strict sense... only occasional meetings of like-minded men and women". It was sometimes referred to by the nickname "the brotherhood of the 'Like-Minded'".The club was a meeting-place for these young thinkers and an organizing ground for their idealist frustration with the general state of American culture and society at the time, and in particular, the state of
intellectualism atHarvard and in theUnitarian church.In 1839, members of the Transcendental Club had the idea of establishing their own periodical as a platform for their ideals. Initially, Brownson suggested utilizing his "Boston Quarterly Review", though others thought their own magazine was necessary. [Von Mehren, Joan. "Minerva and the Muse: A Life of Margaret Fuller". Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994: 120. ISBN 1-55849-015-9] Ultimately, they formed "
The Dial ", with Fuller serving as its first editor in 1841.Notes
Further reading
*
Perry Miller , "The Transcendentalists" (Harvard University Press, 1966). ISBN 1-56731-215-2, ISBN 0-674-90330-7, ISBN 0-674-90333-1.External links
* [http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/ideas/club.html A brief history] of the Club from Transcendentalism Web
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