Frederick Henry Hedge

Frederick Henry Hedge (1805-August 21, 1890) was a New England Unitarian minister and Transcendentalist. He was a founder of the Transcendental Club, originally called Hedge's Club, [Cheevers, Susan. "American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau; Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work" (2006). Detroit: Thorndike Press. Large print edition. ISBN 078629521X. p. 33] and active in the development of Transcendentalism.

Biography

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Hedge traveled to Germany and studied in music before graduating from Harvard in 1825. His knowledge of German was to serve him well both in hymnody (he translated Luther's "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" into English for the first time) and in philosophy, where it allowed him a greater familiarity with Kant than most of the Americans of his day.

After graduating as valedictorian, he enrolled in Harvard Divinity School, where he met his intimate friend Ralph Waldo Emerson. He was central to the development of Transcendentalism in the 1830s, but became alienated from the group's more extreme positions in the 1840s and did not publish in "The Dial", the chief Transcendentalist review.

After graduating from the Divinity School, Hedge was ordained as a Unitarian minister. He served as a minister in Bangor, Maine, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. From 1872 until 1882 he taught German literature at Harvard.

References

External links

* [http://www.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/frederichenryhedge.html Hedge article] from "Dictionary of Unitarian Universalist Biography" online
* Partial text of Hedge's book [http://www.americanunitarian.org/reasoninreligion.htm Reason in Religion] from American Unitarian Conference