The Transcendental Club was a group of New England authors, philosophers, socialists, politicians and intellectuals of the early-to-mid-19th century which gave rise to Transcendentalism.
Overview Frederic Henry Hedge, Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Ripley, and George Putnam, all Unitarian ministers and liberal intellectuals, met in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on September 8, 1836, to discuss the formation of a new club; their first official meeting was held eleven days later at Ripley's house in Boston.Packer, Barbara L. The Transcendentalists. Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 2007: 47. Attendees at ensuing meetings included Amos Bronson Alcott, Cyrus Augustus Bartol, Orestes Brownson, Theodore Parker,Buell, Lawrence. Emerson. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003: 32–33. Henry David Thoreau, William Henry Channing, John Sullivan Dwight, James Freeman Clarke, Christopher Pearse Cranch, Convers Francis, Sylvester Judd, Ephraim Peabody, Chandler Robbins, Charles Follen, Caleb Stetson, Jones Very, and Charles Stearns Wheeler.Gura, Philip F. American Transcendentalism: A History. New York: Hill and Wang, 2007: 7–8. Women members included Sophia Ripley, Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Peabody,Buell, Lawrence. Emerson. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003: 32. Ellen Sturgis Hooper, Caroline Sturgis Tappan, Elizabeth Hoar, Sarah Anne Freeman Clarke, and Sarah Bradford Ripley.
Originally, the group went by the name "Hedge's Club" because it usually met when Hedge was visiting from Bangor, Maine. The name Transcendental Club was given to the group by the public and not by its participants. The name was coined in a January 1837 review of Emerson's essay "Nature" and was intended disparagingly.Hankins, Barry. The Second Great Awakening and the Transcendentalists. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004: 24. James Elliot Cabot, a biographer of Emerson, wrote of the group 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. 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 at Harvard University. Much of their thinking centered on the shortcomings of the Unitarian church.Hankins, Barry. The Second Great Awakening and the Transcendentalists. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004: 23.
Many well-known American journals, including the North American Review and the Christian Examiner, refused to accept submissions from the Transcendental Club for publication.Slater, Abby. In Search of Margaret Fuller. New York: Delacorte Press, 1978: 51. One early review of Emerson's poetry, for example, warned readers that his poems "are not sacred chants; they are hymns to the devil. Not God, but Satan, do they praise, and they can be relished only by devil-worshippers".Kilcup, Karen L. Who Killed American Poetry? From National Obsession to Elite Possession. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2019: 100. In October 1839, members of the Transcendental Club had the idea of establishing their own periodical as a platform for their ideals.Gura, Philip F. American Transcendentalism: A History. New York: Hill and Wang, 2007: 128. 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. Hedge, Parker, and Emerson declined the role of editor. Ripley served as the managing editorSlater, Abby. In Search of Margaret Fuller. New York: Delacorte Press, 1978: 61–62. and Fuller accepted the editor position on October 20, 1839, though she was unable to begin work on the publication until the first week of 1840. The first issue of The Dial, with an introduction by Emerson calling it a "Journal in a new spirit", was published in July 1840.Gura, Philip F. American Transcendentalism: A History. New York: Hill and Wang, 2007: 129.
The Transcendental Club likely did not have official meetings after September 1840, though they continued to correspond and attend each other's lectures.Packer, Barbara L. The Transcendentalists. Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 2007: 165. The Dial continued to be published, though it was never financially stable. In 1843, then business manager Elizabeth Peabody counted only two hundred subscribers and that its income was not covering production costs. It finally ceased publication in April 1844.Gura, Philip F. American Transcendentalism: A History. New York: Hill and Wang, 2007: 130. Emerson's speech/essay "Nature" has been considered a manifesto of Transcendentalist ideas.
References
Sources Perry Miller, The Transcendentalists (Harvard University Press, 1966). , , .
External links A brief history of the club from Transcendentalism Web Caroline Sturgis Tappan Papers at Houghton Library, Harvard University — includes correspondence with Emerson, Fuller, etc.