September, 1836 was a very special time. On September 8th, Frederick Henry Hedge, Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Ripley, and George Putnam met at Ripley’s house to discuss the formation of a club. The very next day, a book called Nature, written by an anonymous author was published. Ten days after its release, the group met. We now know that the anonymous author was Emerson, and the group was The Transcendental Club.

In her book The Transcendentalists, Barbara Packer writes:

These two events – the publication of Emerson’s Nature and the formation of The Transcendental Club – both suggest something important about Transcendentalism. We often think of the movement as an affair of isolated selves writing in lonely integrity, like Thoreau at Walden Pond. But Transcendentalism was also very much a coterie affair, and the strong emotions it evoked from its participants show how much fire lay beneath the native frost of the New England character. (Packer 47-48)

This coterie, this intimate group of intellectuals, consisted of men and women from very different arenas. However, they all had at least one major similarity: they were fed up with American culture. In particular, they were fed up with the intellectual world and its, as they saw it, stifling rigidity. This is the fire that Packet writes about. Transcendentalists did not like the extent to which religious and political doctrine were, in their minds, blindly followed.

So, as any self-respecting American would do, members of The Transcendental Club set out to create their own environment in which they could think freely, collaborate, and flourish. And for four years they did. The most tangible of the group’s accomplishments was The Dial, the Transcendentalists’ homemade publication through which they could publish their own ideas – those ideas consistently rejected by journals such as North American Review and the Christian Examiner. Like The Transcendental Club itself, The Dial was relatively short-lived. It only lasted from 1840-1845.

Still, ambitions for The Dial were high, as seen in this letter written from Emerson to Margaret Fuller in 1840. He writes:

I begin to wish to see a different Dial from that which I first imagined. I would not have it too purely literary. I wish we might make a Journal so broad & great in its survey that it should lead the opinion of this generation on every great interest & read the law on property, government, education, as well as on art, letters, & religion. A great Journal people must read. And it does not seem worth our while to work with any other than sovereign aims. So I wish we might court some of the good fanatics and publish chapters on every head in the whole Art of Living….I know the danger of such latitude of plan in any but the best conducted Journal. It becomes friendly to special modes of reform, partisan, bigoted, perhaps whimsical; not universal & poetic. But our round table is not, I fancy, in imminent peril of party & bigotry, & we shall bruise each the other’s whims by the collision. (Emerson’s Prose and Poetry)

America in 1840 was experiencing major growing pains. At a young 64 years old and deeply entrenched in slavery, the country and its citizens were figuring themselves out. They were figuring out what it meant to be an American. However, I would be cautious in assuming that The Transcendental Club and The Dial were solely a reaction to American culture, to the time and context in which they were being formed. I believe that, more than anything, The Transcendental Club and The Dial were products of their time and context. The members realized a need to share unpopular beliefs that went against popular opinion and found a way to make their voices heard. In many ways, they were working against much of what America signified, while simultaneously acting in ways we now consider to be part of the “American spirit.” As Emerson put it, “America is another name for opportunity.” The Transcendental Club and The Dial were certainly mediums for opportunity.

“The last meeting of the Transcendental Club was probably the meeting held in September 1840” (Packer 165). Though the group only met for four years, their influence on American literature, politics, religion, and beyond was remarkable.

Further Reading

Packer, Barbara. The Transcendentalists. 1st ed. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2007. Print.