There was no club in the strict sense

It all began on September 8, 1836, in Cambridge, Massachusetts: Four men — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederic Henry Hedge, George Putnam, and George Ripley — discussed the formation of a new club which would meet officially for the first time 11 days later. It was initially known as "Hedge's Club," because they met only when Hedge could make the trip all the way from Maine to Massachusetts; it soon came to be known as the "Transcendental Club."

The beginnings of transcendentalism were rooted in this meeting (as well as Emerson's essay "Nature" published in the same month). Hedge himself admitted, "there was no club in the strict sense... only occasional meetings of like-minded men and women." Their like-mindedness, however, was equally questionable. These men and women gathered to discuss important issues of the day as well as more metaphysical or theological questions. The four original meeting participants each played their own role:
Emerson became the figurehead of the group and a sort of spokesperson. He became well-known as a public lecturer, traveling around the country promoting his ideas (and his questions). Though not all became followers of the philosophy, Emerson would count hundreds in attendance at his public readings. He also assisted in the creation of The Dial, the official journal of the movement.

Frederic Henry Hedge (who only occasionally used a "k" in his first name and is pictured above) used his scholarship and knowledge of German writings to influence the group's thinking. A graduate of Harvard Divinity School (like Emerson), he feared the slow development of American theology but joined the movement because he felt "there was a promise in the air of a new era of intellectual life." Even so, he drifted away from the group by the end of the 1840s, and refused to contribute to the The Dial for fearing of being associated with them in print.

George Ripley, who hosted the group's first official meeting, took their philosophical ideas and put them into practice as the founder of the communal living experiment Brook Farm. He also edited a collection of translations called Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature meant to show the breadth of interest in the group. After Brook Farm's dissolution, he led a more mundane life as a quiet literary critic in New York.

George Putnam, a Unitarian minister in Roxbury, Massachusetts, did not last long as a Transcendentalist. In fact, nearly a half a century later, Hedge dismissed him in a letter outlining the group's origins as someone "who so soon withdrew from the connection that 'tis not worth the while to mention his name."

What's most important about understanding Transcendentalism (an admittedly nebulous concept and movement) is that it began as a theological group — not as a literary movement. Most of its members were or had been religious leaders or religious thinkers (though there were exceptions).

We set down our Dial on the earth

The members of the Transcendental Club all supported the establishment of a new journal for their cause; as Ralph Waldo Emerson called it, "an organ of our own, wherein we can have entire freedom; in which the purest thoughts and tastes may be represented." But who would run it? Bronson Alcott — a vocal supporter for "a free Journal of the soul" — was not an option, nor was Frederick Henry Hedge, then living too far away in Maine. George Ripley had his own projects (though he would serve as business manger for The Dial). Emerson himself refused, writing that "we all wish it to be, but do not wish to be in any way personally responsible for it."

On October 20, 1839, the role of first editor of The Dial was accepted by Margaret Fuller. She wrote in her journal: "It is now proposed that I should conduct a magazine which would afford me space and occasion for every thing I may wish to do." Work began a couple months later; its first issue was in print by April 1840. Its introduction, likely a combined effort by Fuller and Emerson, read:

And so with diligent hands and good intent we set down our Dial on the earth. We wish it may resemble that instrument in its celebrated happiness, that of measuring no hours but those of sunshine. Let it be one cheerful rational voice amidst the din of mourners and polemics. Or to abide by our chosen image, let it be such a Dial, not as the dead face of a clock... but rather such a Dial as is the Garden itself, in whose leaves and flowers the suddenly awakened sleeper is instantly apprised not what part of dead time, but what state of life and growth is now arrived and arriving.

Though she would use the magazine as an outlet for her own reform ideas (including her feminist essay "The Great Lawsuit"), Fuller was instantly frustrated with her editorial duties. For one, her promised salary of $200 was likely never paid. Hedge, one of the strongest supporters of the idea of a journal, suddenly refused to contribute, worrying about his reputation. Alcott's contributions, his "Orphic Sayings," were incoherent and embarrassing. Orestes Brownson called the journal "vague" and "aerial," lacking focus in the real world. Worse, despite his refusal to be titled as editor, Emerson became a micro-manager. Fuller left the magazine two years later.

*A solid source for the information in today's entry is the first volume of Charles Capper's monumental Margaret Fuller: An American Romantic Life.

Social Reform will be paramount

The Utopian pilgrims at Brook Farm wanted to expand their idealistic (and Transcendentalist) beliefs to others — so they started a newspaper. The first issue of The Harbinger was published on June 14, 1845. George Ripley, the leading founder of Brook Farm, served as editor and announced his intentions in the inaugural issue: "promote the triumph of the high democratic faith" and "the advancement and happiness of the masses" while raging against "all exclusive privilege in legislation, political arrangements, and social customs." As for content:

The interests of Social Reform will be paramount to all others in whatever is admitted into the pages of the Harbinger. We shall suffer no attachment to literature, no taste for abstract discussion, no love of purely intellectual theories, to seduce us from our devotion to the cause of the oppressed, the down trodden, the insulted and injured masses of our fellow men. Every pulsation of our being vibrates in sympathy with the wrongs of the toiling millions; and every wise effort for their speedy enfranchisement will find in us resolute and indomitable advocates.

Brook Farm drew nation-wide interest as an experiment in Utopian communal living. Its founders, including both Ripley and Charles Anderson Dana, studied and promoted the Associationist philosophies of Charles Fourier (and were often away from the farm as they did so). The timing was odd; Albert Brisbane, the leading promoter of Fourierism in the United States, was struggling with his publication The Phalanx. Another journal, The Social Reformer, was also losing steam. The Brook Farmers took up the mantle of both (partly because four members of the community had a background in printing). Thus, The Harbinger was born.

What to name the new publication was a bit of a concern. As journalist and supporter Parke Godwin wrote:

Call it the Pilot, the Harbinger, the Halycon, the Harmonist, The Worker, the Architect, The Zodiac, The Pleiad, the Iris, the Examiner, The Aurora, the Crown, the Imperial, the Independent, the Synthesist, the Light, the Truth, the Hope, the Teacher, the Reconciler, the Wedge, the Pirate, the Seer, the Indicator, the Tailor, the Babe in the Manger, the Universe, the Apocalypse, the Red Dragon, the Plant, Beelzebub—the Devil or anything rather than the meaningless name Phalanx.

The final title is a pun on the French word "fourrier," or "harbinger." The newspaper actually outlived Brook Farm; after Brook Farm's collapse, Ripley and Dana moved to New York, where they continued to publish The Harbinger until its final issue in October 1847.

*The image above is the print-shop, the only building still standing on the site of Brook Farm at West Roxbury, Massachusetts. The other image is the front page of a november 1846 issue of The Harbinger.

**Information for this post comes from Philip F. Gura's American Transcendentalism: A History and Sterling Delano's Brook Farm: The Dark Side of Utopia.

Tribune vs. Ledger

Horace Greeley was in Washington D.C. and left his newspaper, the ubiquitous New York Tribune, in the hands of editor Charles Anderson Dana. Dana (pictured), a former Brook Farm participant, ran an advertisement in the June 13, 1856 issue of the newspaper which caused a bit of a headache.

Sylvanus Cobb, Jr. signed a contract with Robert Bonner to write for his New York Ledger. Bonner always paid top dollar for talent and promoted his contributors aggressively. It surpassed the Tribune in readership and, by the fall of 1856, its success was celebrated with a hundred-gun salute at City Hall Park. Bonner advertised what would be Cobb's second serialized novel for the Ledger; the full-page ad in the Tribune cost Bonner $1,500 and took up a full page.

Dana, however, decided to throw in an editorial on the page next to the advertisement, roundly condemning the Ledger. Logically, it's not a good idea to criticize advertisers, especially one which is such a high-paying, high-profile client. Bonner was outraged, forcing the Tribune to print an apology. Dana later resigned from the staff in 1862.

Another member of the Tribune staff, George Ripley, was also a former Brook Farmer (and, in fact, its visionary founder). After his radical Utopianism and Fourierism, Ripley had mostly settled into a less radical figure and became a popular critic. In his criticism, unlike Dana, he rarely engaged in literary disputes and was known for being cheery, good-natured, and uncontroversial.

*I haven't been able to find either the offensive editorial in question or the apology from which to quote. Anyone with links to online resources, feel free to drop them in the comments section!

Dreams of Brook Farm burn down

Though it was not expressly a literary endeavor, Brook Farm in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, was meant to foster intellectual goals. By pooling their labor on a farm, the founders believed, all members of the community would have the time for their literary, artistic, scientific, or philosophical pursuits. Proponents (who never joined) included Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody. Its biggest literary luminary, however, was Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of its founding members in 1841.

As a community based on tenets of Transcendentalism, Brook Farm's philosophies didn't necessarily appeal to Hawthorne (who, despite some false information out there, was never a Transcendentalist; if anything, he was anti-Transcendentalism). The struggling author joined in the hope of making enough money to start off his marriage to Sophia Peabody on secure financial footing. Hawthorne even became the community's treasurer for a time.

However, he soon learned that free time was nonexistent, and his farm duties (including shoveling manure) were too much for him. "Labor is the curse of the world," he wrote his fiancee, "and nobody can meddle with it without becoming proportionately brutified." Hawthorne left Brook Farm, later using his experience as an inspiration for his novel The Blithedale Romance, at a time when it still had the potential of being successful.

It never was — and most historians agree the beginning of the end for Brook Farm was March 3, 1846.

Brook Farm had recently reorganized as a community based on the ideas of Charles Fourier and spent massive amounts of money on a central community building, the Phalanstery. As Brook Farm founder George Ripley described, it would have "a large and commodious kitchen, a dining-hall capable of seating from three to four hundred persons, two public saloons, and a spacious hall or lecture room." On March 3, it caught fire and burned to the ground within two hours, before construction was completed, after a $7000 investment (nearly $160,000 today).

Uninsured, the community lost most of its money. George Ripley quietly disassociated himself from his experiment at creating Utopia in America. Other participants, who had been very happy there despite financial difficulty, slowly broke away too. Today, most of the land that was Brook Farm is a series of cemeteries.


*The image above is "The Hive," a building which served as the main social center, library, and dining hall. The Phalanstery would have replaced many of its functions but also included living space.