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The Transcendentalists and Their World
The Transcendentalists and Their World offers a fresh view of the thinkers whose outsize impact on philosophy and literature would spread from tiny Concord to all corners of the earth. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the Alcotts called this New England town home, and Thoreau drew on its life extensively in his classic Walden . But Concord from the 1820s through the 1840s was no pastoral place fit for poets and philosophers. The Transcendentalists lived through a transformative epoch of American life. Concord was a community in ferment, whose small, ordered society was unsettled through the expansive forces of capitalism and democracy. These changes challenged a world of inherited institutions and involuntary associations with a new premium on autonomy and choice. The Transcendentalists and Their World is both an intimate journey into the life of a community and a searching cultural study of major American writers as they plumbed the depths of the universe for spiritual truths and surveyed the rapidly changing contours of their own neighborhoods. It shows us familiar figures in American literature alongside their neighbors at every level of the social order, and it reveals how this common life in Concord entered powerfully into their works.
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First published November 1, 2021
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About the author
Robert A. Gross
15 books16 followersA specialist in the social and cultural history of the United States, from the colonial era through the nineteenth century, Robert Alan Gross is an emeritus faculty member at the University of Connecticut.
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November 14, 2021
This is a masterpiece. Gross has been researching, studying and analyzing the pre-Civil War history of Concord, Massachusetts for over 50 years. His 1976 book, "The Minutemen and Their World" is a classic. This is his magnum opus on Concord.
The first half of this pleasingly long book is a detailed portrait of Concord from roughly 1820 to 1835. The second half is the story of Emerson, Thoreau and their circle in Concord from 1835 to 1850.
The first half is micro-history of the best kind. Gross wants us to understand how Concord worked and what it was like to live their. Gross has a clear and balanced style with no hint of academic prose. He describes subtle and sophisticated issues elegantly.
Gross has very meaty chapters on every aspect of life in Concord. Education, farming, manufacturing, shop-keeping and social organizations all get described and all get fitted into the web of the whole town.
Concord was, like every small town, controlled by a few key men.
William Emerson, Ralph Waldo's grandfather, was the minister of the First Parish Church in Concord. He died as a fighting minister in the Revolutionary War. Ezra Ripley, a new college graduate, took over the position in 1778 and married William's widow. That made him Ralph Waldo's "step grandfather"
Ezra Ripley served a the minister of First Parish Church for 63 years until his death at age 90 in 1841. He was the most influential person in Concord for most of that time. He served on every committee. Laws usually didn't pass if he opposed them. He preached that everyone had a duty not just to God, but also to their community. He supported charity to the poor.
He was a relatively liberal theologian. He preached an inclusive church without strict doctrine. As the years went on, groups split off in both directions. A Calvinist group thought he was too liberal. A Universalist group thought he was too traditional.
This was a world dominated by religion. In 1838 Abner Kneeland was convicted of blasphemy in Boston and served 60 days in jail for claiming that Jesus was not divine and that the biblical miracles were not real. Until into the 1840s the town church was supported by taxes.
Danial Shattuck owned the biggest store in town. He invested in banks, factories, real estate, and railroads. He became the richest man in town. He was involved with the Social Circle club, which was a small private club of powerful local men. It pretty much ran the town.
John Keyes and Samuel Hoar were the two most successful lawyers and politicians in town. They were both members of the Social Club. They both served terms as state representatives and senators. Keyes was the Middlesex County treasurer for over twenty years. Hoar served as a United State Senator.
These names, Ripley, Shattuck, Keyes and Hoar, show up in the middle of every issue, committee or business opportunity in Concord during this time.
They were all prominent Masons. In the 1830s a wave of Anti-Masonic feeling swept the country. In Concord the Anti-Masonic party swept all of the old guard out of power. After a few years, most of them were back.
The book is full of great details. There was a bitter feud between Lexington and Concord about which town was really where the Revolutionary War began. Ezra Ripley wrote a book on the subject. The railroads killed many of the shops in Concord because now people could easily shop in Boston.
The second half of the book revolves around Emerson and Thoreau.
Gross says, "Concord did not make Emerson a transcendentalist.....but it supplied ample resources with which to illustrate and apply his observations of New England life."
I am not a fan of Emerson or of transcendentalism. However, Gross's description and explanation of Emerson's thought is the best I have ever read. He emphasizes the conflict between Emerson's individualism and the traditional Concord emphasis on duty to community which his step-grandfather preached.
Gross also tells the stories of those who were not impressed with Emerson. George Moore was a young man who was part of the Emerson social circle. He attended many of his lectures. In the end, Moore found the theories too abstract to be useful. He became an Unitarian minister.
John Shepard Keyes, son of the lawyer and politician, traveled in Emerson's circle. He dabbled in transcendentalism but was not convinced. He followed his father into the law. Mary Booker was an adamant and dedicated abolitionist. She was disappointed in Emerson's reluctance to publicly take on the slavery issue.
The book is filled with deep consideration from a life of working on these issues. It ends with a fascinating discussion of why it was that Thoreau choose to grow beans at Walden Pond rather than the more common wheat, rye or corn.
The footnotes and acknowledgements which take up almost 200 pages, are great reading. Gross explains in detail how he came to his conclusions. It is a shame modern publishers refuse to put footnotes at the foot of the page where they belong. This book would have been enhanced if we could easily study the notes as we read.
This is a book worth reading slowly. It does what the best history does. It gives a hint of what it was like to live in a different place at a different time.
The first half of this pleasingly long book is a detailed portrait of Concord from roughly 1820 to 1835. The second half is the story of Emerson, Thoreau and their circle in Concord from 1835 to 1850.
The first half is micro-history of the best kind. Gross wants us to understand how Concord worked and what it was like to live their. Gross has a clear and balanced style with no hint of academic prose. He describes subtle and sophisticated issues elegantly.
Gross has very meaty chapters on every aspect of life in Concord. Education, farming, manufacturing, shop-keeping and social organizations all get described and all get fitted into the web of the whole town.
Concord was, like every small town, controlled by a few key men.
William Emerson, Ralph Waldo's grandfather, was the minister of the First Parish Church in Concord. He died as a fighting minister in the Revolutionary War. Ezra Ripley, a new college graduate, took over the position in 1778 and married William's widow. That made him Ralph Waldo's "step grandfather"
Ezra Ripley served a the minister of First Parish Church for 63 years until his death at age 90 in 1841. He was the most influential person in Concord for most of that time. He served on every committee. Laws usually didn't pass if he opposed them. He preached that everyone had a duty not just to God, but also to their community. He supported charity to the poor.
He was a relatively liberal theologian. He preached an inclusive church without strict doctrine. As the years went on, groups split off in both directions. A Calvinist group thought he was too liberal. A Universalist group thought he was too traditional.
This was a world dominated by religion. In 1838 Abner Kneeland was convicted of blasphemy in Boston and served 60 days in jail for claiming that Jesus was not divine and that the biblical miracles were not real. Until into the 1840s the town church was supported by taxes.
Danial Shattuck owned the biggest store in town. He invested in banks, factories, real estate, and railroads. He became the richest man in town. He was involved with the Social Circle club, which was a small private club of powerful local men. It pretty much ran the town.
John Keyes and Samuel Hoar were the two most successful lawyers and politicians in town. They were both members of the Social Club. They both served terms as state representatives and senators. Keyes was the Middlesex County treasurer for over twenty years. Hoar served as a United State Senator.
These names, Ripley, Shattuck, Keyes and Hoar, show up in the middle of every issue, committee or business opportunity in Concord during this time.
They were all prominent Masons. In the 1830s a wave of Anti-Masonic feeling swept the country. In Concord the Anti-Masonic party swept all of the old guard out of power. After a few years, most of them were back.
The book is full of great details. There was a bitter feud between Lexington and Concord about which town was really where the Revolutionary War began. Ezra Ripley wrote a book on the subject. The railroads killed many of the shops in Concord because now people could easily shop in Boston.
The second half of the book revolves around Emerson and Thoreau.
Gross says, "Concord did not make Emerson a transcendentalist.....but it supplied ample resources with which to illustrate and apply his observations of New England life."
I am not a fan of Emerson or of transcendentalism. However, Gross's description and explanation of Emerson's thought is the best I have ever read. He emphasizes the conflict between Emerson's individualism and the traditional Concord emphasis on duty to community which his step-grandfather preached.
Gross also tells the stories of those who were not impressed with Emerson. George Moore was a young man who was part of the Emerson social circle. He attended many of his lectures. In the end, Moore found the theories too abstract to be useful. He became an Unitarian minister.
John Shepard Keyes, son of the lawyer and politician, traveled in Emerson's circle. He dabbled in transcendentalism but was not convinced. He followed his father into the law. Mary Booker was an adamant and dedicated abolitionist. She was disappointed in Emerson's reluctance to publicly take on the slavery issue.
The book is filled with deep consideration from a life of working on these issues. It ends with a fascinating discussion of why it was that Thoreau choose to grow beans at Walden Pond rather than the more common wheat, rye or corn.
The footnotes and acknowledgements which take up almost 200 pages, are great reading. Gross explains in detail how he came to his conclusions. It is a shame modern publishers refuse to put footnotes at the foot of the page where they belong. This book would have been enhanced if we could easily study the notes as we read.
This is a book worth reading slowly. It does what the best history does. It gives a hint of what it was like to live in a different place at a different time.
May 4, 2023
I sit at my computer both to praise Mr. Gross for this tremendous, in-depth – and by “in-depth” I mean really in-depth – look at Concord and its environs in the first part of the 19th century but also to advise/warn would-be readers that this amazing piece of scholarship is not the best place for someone interested in, but not terribly knowledgeable about, the Transcendentalists to begin.
The reason for such a caution is intimately tied to why I think this work is so outstanding – for while Gross does discuss individuals who considered themselves to be either Transcendentalists themselves or, at the least, who associated with them, he does so only after devoting the first half of the book to a very detailed investigation of all aspects of life in this part of the world in the early decades of the 19th century. While this results in an amazing “feel” for what it was like to have been living then, I fear that many who are curious about Transcendentalism itself will have, long before the midpoint of the book has neared, nodded off or closed its pages for good.
Moreover, his focus on the individuals involved in this intellectual “movement” (for want of a better word) is overwhelmingly on Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau, certainly the two figures who are the best-remembered of this group of interesting and in many ways quite diverse group, but not the only ones whose thoughts are worth remembering.
One of the reasons for this is that both Emerson and Thoreau, however much they may have introduced or most ably represented key elements of what came to be call Transcendentalism, were also among the small number who most resisted applying their intellectual principles and conclusions to their communities through action!
This means that we learn only glancingly about those who tried the interesting, but short-lived, experiments in different types of communal (or communitarian) living “on the land,” but also those who threw themselves vigorously into both abolitionism – calling for the end of chattel Black slavery – and for the granting of full civil and political rights to women.
Again without any intent to detract from this remarkable and stunning work, I mention this because the strain of Transcendentalism represented by Emerson in particular has come to be associated with the late 20th century (and continuing, unfortunately) theme of individualism that calls for human liberation and the “rights” of each person to attain fulfillment in the way s/he chooses without any, or much, discussion of how this is to be accomplished within – and without what consequences for – the larger communities of which we are all of a part.
The voices largely missing from Gross’ work – or, if represented, only in a brief, rather muted manner – are precisely the greater number of men and women who, spurred by Transcendentalism, chose to throw themselves into acting on behalf of the larger communities of which they were apart. This vital legacy of Transcendentalism has thankfully continued to influence subsequent generations in a far more positive and communal way that the individual uber alles that can be seen lurking in Emerson’s thought, as we can see in the efforts of the Populists and Progressives at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries in the United States and in the writings and activism of such more recent figures as Dr. Martin Luther King.
Moreover, some of the most vibrant – and still “relevant” – voices from that period are those of many remarkable women, most of whom receive only passing mention from Professor Gross.
For those seeking an accessible introduction to these men and women and their thought, I would recommend checking out the Teaching Company’s 24 lecture series available on DVDs in the course Emerson, Thoreau, and the Transcendentalist Movement.
[https://www.thegreatcourses.com/cours...].
However, it is important to note that these caveats are meant in no way to detract from what I found to be an incredible work of scholarship that slowly pulled me into another time and place and one that, amazingly, I found to have many echoes to our own time!
How could this be? While in one sense the world of the early 18th century was merely “a few pages back” in the cosmic perspective of time, for many I am sure it represents a period nearly coterminous with the “Dark Ages.”
Thanks to Dr. Gross, we meet men and women very much like ourselves who are struggling with very contemporary questions: How do I adjust to change which threatens not only “how things have always been done” but also how I “understand the way things are”? How do I fit in? (An especially pertinent point for the growing number of young women who yearned to grow beyond traditional constraining expectations of what a “woman’s proper place” was?) How do we “juggle” the understandable wish to keep our community “as sound as it has been” with the disrupting influences coming from revolutions in agriculture, industry, and manufacturing?
As this book makes clear, the early years of the 18th century saw the industrial revolution reaching into the relative “hinterlands” of the country, upending the traditional ways of growing food, of producing linen and other goods from home labor, of expecting to find in local stores merchandise reflecting what was home-grown and home-produced only to find it competing – at a marked economic disadvantage – with cheaper goods produced in factories or farms elsewhere but now flooding in thanks to advances in transportation, especially those brought about by the railroad.
And then there were the non-Yankees who began to move into town, drawn by opportunities and necessities – for example, the large number of Irish who had fled Ireland and found scarce employment in the hard-working environment involved in building and extending railroad beds. New people! New ideas! New roles for men and women!
And then, too, continued to unfold the intellectual consequences of the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment which upended old certainties and threatened long-established and long-revered institutions, the most important of these was the church which, in Concord as well as throughout the Northeast, were of the Protestant, Calvinist, and congregational variety. In these same years new offshoots – such as Unitarians and Trinitarians – arose to siphon off some from the older churches into these newer ones, unsettling social and community relationships.
Well, I will conclude here in the hopes that I have given you but a small idea why I found this book so rich in evoking the times from which the Transcendentalists emerged, an understanding which makes their intellectual evolution more understandable and meaningful.
Reflecting the immense scholarship lying behind these pages, Professor Gross devotes pp. 609 through 836 to listing his notes and index! Color me highly appreciative and greatly awed!
The reason for such a caution is intimately tied to why I think this work is so outstanding – for while Gross does discuss individuals who considered themselves to be either Transcendentalists themselves or, at the least, who associated with them, he does so only after devoting the first half of the book to a very detailed investigation of all aspects of life in this part of the world in the early decades of the 19th century. While this results in an amazing “feel” for what it was like to have been living then, I fear that many who are curious about Transcendentalism itself will have, long before the midpoint of the book has neared, nodded off or closed its pages for good.
Moreover, his focus on the individuals involved in this intellectual “movement” (for want of a better word) is overwhelmingly on Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau, certainly the two figures who are the best-remembered of this group of interesting and in many ways quite diverse group, but not the only ones whose thoughts are worth remembering.
One of the reasons for this is that both Emerson and Thoreau, however much they may have introduced or most ably represented key elements of what came to be call Transcendentalism, were also among the small number who most resisted applying their intellectual principles and conclusions to their communities through action!
This means that we learn only glancingly about those who tried the interesting, but short-lived, experiments in different types of communal (or communitarian) living “on the land,” but also those who threw themselves vigorously into both abolitionism – calling for the end of chattel Black slavery – and for the granting of full civil and political rights to women.
Again without any intent to detract from this remarkable and stunning work, I mention this because the strain of Transcendentalism represented by Emerson in particular has come to be associated with the late 20th century (and continuing, unfortunately) theme of individualism that calls for human liberation and the “rights” of each person to attain fulfillment in the way s/he chooses without any, or much, discussion of how this is to be accomplished within – and without what consequences for – the larger communities of which we are all of a part.
The voices largely missing from Gross’ work – or, if represented, only in a brief, rather muted manner – are precisely the greater number of men and women who, spurred by Transcendentalism, chose to throw themselves into acting on behalf of the larger communities of which they were apart. This vital legacy of Transcendentalism has thankfully continued to influence subsequent generations in a far more positive and communal way that the individual uber alles that can be seen lurking in Emerson’s thought, as we can see in the efforts of the Populists and Progressives at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries in the United States and in the writings and activism of such more recent figures as Dr. Martin Luther King.
Moreover, some of the most vibrant – and still “relevant” – voices from that period are those of many remarkable women, most of whom receive only passing mention from Professor Gross.
For those seeking an accessible introduction to these men and women and their thought, I would recommend checking out the Teaching Company’s 24 lecture series available on DVDs in the course Emerson, Thoreau, and the Transcendentalist Movement.
[https://www.thegreatcourses.com/cours...].
However, it is important to note that these caveats are meant in no way to detract from what I found to be an incredible work of scholarship that slowly pulled me into another time and place and one that, amazingly, I found to have many echoes to our own time!
How could this be? While in one sense the world of the early 18th century was merely “a few pages back” in the cosmic perspective of time, for many I am sure it represents a period nearly coterminous with the “Dark Ages.”
Thanks to Dr. Gross, we meet men and women very much like ourselves who are struggling with very contemporary questions: How do I adjust to change which threatens not only “how things have always been done” but also how I “understand the way things are”? How do I fit in? (An especially pertinent point for the growing number of young women who yearned to grow beyond traditional constraining expectations of what a “woman’s proper place” was?) How do we “juggle” the understandable wish to keep our community “as sound as it has been” with the disrupting influences coming from revolutions in agriculture, industry, and manufacturing?
As this book makes clear, the early years of the 18th century saw the industrial revolution reaching into the relative “hinterlands” of the country, upending the traditional ways of growing food, of producing linen and other goods from home labor, of expecting to find in local stores merchandise reflecting what was home-grown and home-produced only to find it competing – at a marked economic disadvantage – with cheaper goods produced in factories or farms elsewhere but now flooding in thanks to advances in transportation, especially those brought about by the railroad.
And then there were the non-Yankees who began to move into town, drawn by opportunities and necessities – for example, the large number of Irish who had fled Ireland and found scarce employment in the hard-working environment involved in building and extending railroad beds. New people! New ideas! New roles for men and women!
And then, too, continued to unfold the intellectual consequences of the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment which upended old certainties and threatened long-established and long-revered institutions, the most important of these was the church which, in Concord as well as throughout the Northeast, were of the Protestant, Calvinist, and congregational variety. In these same years new offshoots – such as Unitarians and Trinitarians – arose to siphon off some from the older churches into these newer ones, unsettling social and community relationships.
Well, I will conclude here in the hopes that I have given you but a small idea why I found this book so rich in evoking the times from which the Transcendentalists emerged, an understanding which makes their intellectual evolution more understandable and meaningful.
Reflecting the immense scholarship lying behind these pages, Professor Gross devotes pp. 609 through 836 to listing his notes and index! Color me highly appreciative and greatly awed!
May 15, 2022
Emphasis on “their world,” meaning Concord, Massachusetts in the first half of the nineteenth century. You will learn tons about manufacturing “the common pencil,” the family business that bored the shit out of Henry David Thoreau. Agricultural and educational reform. Industrialization and railroads. Internecine church discord. The unconscionably slow awakening of the abolitionist movement. Rich in granular census data, court records, diaries, letters. This approach to history—dubbed “new social history” when author Robert A. Gross began championing it in the 1970s—pays bountiful dividends. Transcendentalism’s nonconformity and romantic idealism go nowhere without a receptive “rising generation” seeking countercultural “newness.” Emersonian self-reliance is about bestowing wonderment and dignity upon human consciousness. Gross shows us what was happening on the ground—literally—in Concord (e.g., the cultivation of the Concord grape, and Thoreau’s storied bean-field). The book’s nearly 200 pages of endnotes comprise citation upon citation, and, in the best David Foster Wallace tradition, often include entertaining nested mini-narratives. All of which is to say: Transcendentalism rightfully deserves context, and by God, Gross’s 864-page career-capping masterpiece supplies it.
January 9, 2022
Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this fantastic work. This was such a treat! Perhaps, unexpected but I really enjoyed this.
The story of Concord, MA, Emerson, and Thoreau. I learned a ton from this excellent history. The topic may not be one that people will immediately jump at - but I would highly recommend this. I guarantee that everyone will learn much from this one.
The story of Concord, MA, Emerson, and Thoreau. I learned a ton from this excellent history. The topic may not be one that people will immediately jump at - but I would highly recommend this. I guarantee that everyone will learn much from this one.
December 25, 2021
This book is about Early America. Emerson-Thoreau- Religion -Politics- Mr Gross fine tunes every part of Americana that has been forgotten . The Development of schools . School Committees. The fracturing of multiple religions. The irony that the Puritans and the Pilgrims left England to practice their religion as they saw fit yet in turn began doing exactly what they fled from. Their view of God was the correct one. That they were the chosen ones. Men and Women. Its enough to fill one with bilious contempt. Increase and Cotten Mather can be heard in the background. Salem and deviltry beckons . This is a good book. It's startling to read that the development of the railroad diminished Concord and built out Fitchburg and the surrounding cities. This is because one always hears about the rails out west but we forget about how it affected us in the east. Emerson-Thoreau. The other upstart religions that came and went. Read it.
January 11, 2022
Interesting book. More about the history of Concord, MA than about the Transcendentalists. Frankly, I am glad of that. It is extremely well researched.
August 2, 2024
The Transcendentalists and Their World is, strictly speaking, a somewhat misleading title. The Community That Produced the Transcendentalists would be a bit more accurate. Robert A. Gross, however, wanted very much to echo the title of his first book, The Minutemen and Their World. Consequently, we have a book in two parts. The first, "A Community In Change," includes almost nothing about transcendentalism, as it was not invented yet. Instead Gross treats us to a very granular history of the community of Concord, Massachusetts, quite obviously based on primary documents. His purpose is to show the reader the mores and social conditions out of which the Transcendentalists arose and against which were they were rebelling. He makes a quietly compelling case.
The first half of the book covers the 1820s and '30s. Concord makes the transition from being a farming community to a manufacturing economy and in the process becomes wealthy. The positive effects of this wealth include the formation of a lyceum, the growth of a downtown where residents can purchase goods from away, and the amassing of a certain amount of political power. The negative effects include the growth of inequity among Concord's population and (as a consequence of the former) the exacerbation of political divisions. We also witness the splintering of the religious community and the general decline of the effect of religion in everyday life.
Gross is masterful in his ability to weave exposition and anecdote together into a tapestry that gives the reader a detailed picture of Concord without really including anything extraneous. Granted, if one is not familiar with the details of governance in a small New England town, some of the information he shares may seem esoteric. I am lucky to work for a small England town (in New Hampshire) and so enjoyed seeing the similarities and differences between the little rangeline town where I work and mighty and sophisticated Concord, Massachusetts. It was instructive and at times amusing.
In the early 19th century our town did have a few movers and shakers who called the shots, but because we are not near a large city and the town was less than half the size of Concord, here their power did not really extend much beyond the town itself and what they could make happen was on a comparably smaller scale. While the squires of Concord, for example, were able to attract a railroad line that passed through the appropriate parts of their community, here the "iron horse" arrived late, skirted our eastern boundary, and we didn't get a stop in the town itself, all of which had economic consequences.
In the first part of this tome (the text is 608 pages long, followed by 228 pages of notes, acknowledgements, and an index) the Transcendentalists are barely mentioned, but their families pop up at regular intervals. Waldo Emerson's step-grandfather was the prominent pastor, Ezra Ripley, and Gross casts him as a pillar of the Old Guard, the generation of the Revolution, who believed that inter-connectedness among the citizenry was vital to its health. Individuality was regularly sacrificed on the altar of a shared ethos. John Thoreau Sr., Henry's father, was a struggling pencil manufacturer who walked a careful line through the minefield of social jockeying in town. He was a member of the lyceum because he was interested in new ideas, but he was never invited to join the Social Circle, a club where the economic elite hobnobbed and made deals.
The second half of the narrative, which shares its title with the book itself, fits Transcendentalism into the story of Concord. The main point that Gross wants to make it that the focus on the development of the individual, what we might now call "self actualization," very much flew in the face of the societal norms of this place and time. Waldo Emerson comes down to us as a rather fussy, difficult-to-understand writer, but Gross tries very hard to show how revolutionary his words were in context. But he also shows how his feet were very much made of clay with respect to some important social issues.
Although the role of women gets a fair amount of attention in this book, for some reason Margaret Fuller, who was both a Transcendentalist and a feminist, gets short shrift. Perhaps she in herself is just too big a personality and would have taken over the narrative. Instead we regularly check in on Henry Thoreau's mother and his aunts, who were active in the movement that broke up the unity of the religious community and were later prominent in the abolitionist movement. Gross explores the lives of several other women, some from socially prominent families and some not, through close attention to diaries and public records. The portraits he creates are sometimes painful to read. This was a period of history during which women were actually losing social power in some ways as the Victorian period approached. Emerson, it must be said, was manifestly uninterested in equity for women.
Emerson's tardy embrace of abolitionism was due to a combination of his ingrained prejudices (he is, without a doubt, a racist) and his principled refusal to join any mass movement (or at least not be an early adopter). It was the conviction of the Transcendentalists that if you focused on becoming who you really are, then you would move through your community in such a way as to make it a better place. Mass movements, of course, tell other people how they should improve themselves. The written record, which is all Gross has to go on, does not seem to preserve Emerson's struggle with himself over the topic of slavery and what to do about it, but the historian is able to create a timeline during which we watch the philosopher change his mind and therefore his self. There is no Saul-on-the-road sort of drama. Instead, there is a transformation that takes place over years.
Henry Thoreau, on the other hand, is shown to be the doer in all ways that Emerson was more or less the talker. The younger man remains in many ways more of an enigma than his mentor. His early life is shown to be a socially diffident one. Reading between the lines, one wonders whether Thoreau had some mild form of autism. In his youth he seemed unable to join in any proverbial reindeer games. After his return from Harvard he made an attempt to be involved in the community on terms he could countenance. But his decision at Walden Pond to "live deliberately" constituted a road-to-Damascus moment (albeit one two years long) that set the course for the rest of his life.
Gross is a historian and not a philosopher, so his goal is to set the Transcendentalist in a local historical context, not to explain Transcendentalism. However, I did come away from this book with a much better understanding of the philosophy and I did find it helpful to get the historical perspective. Gross is not explicit or scientific about a proof, but he does make a good case for why this movement started in Concord, Massachusetts and not somewhere else.
The first half of the book covers the 1820s and '30s. Concord makes the transition from being a farming community to a manufacturing economy and in the process becomes wealthy. The positive effects of this wealth include the formation of a lyceum, the growth of a downtown where residents can purchase goods from away, and the amassing of a certain amount of political power. The negative effects include the growth of inequity among Concord's population and (as a consequence of the former) the exacerbation of political divisions. We also witness the splintering of the religious community and the general decline of the effect of religion in everyday life.
Gross is masterful in his ability to weave exposition and anecdote together into a tapestry that gives the reader a detailed picture of Concord without really including anything extraneous. Granted, if one is not familiar with the details of governance in a small New England town, some of the information he shares may seem esoteric. I am lucky to work for a small England town (in New Hampshire) and so enjoyed seeing the similarities and differences between the little rangeline town where I work and mighty and sophisticated Concord, Massachusetts. It was instructive and at times amusing.
In the early 19th century our town did have a few movers and shakers who called the shots, but because we are not near a large city and the town was less than half the size of Concord, here their power did not really extend much beyond the town itself and what they could make happen was on a comparably smaller scale. While the squires of Concord, for example, were able to attract a railroad line that passed through the appropriate parts of their community, here the "iron horse" arrived late, skirted our eastern boundary, and we didn't get a stop in the town itself, all of which had economic consequences.
In the first part of this tome (the text is 608 pages long, followed by 228 pages of notes, acknowledgements, and an index) the Transcendentalists are barely mentioned, but their families pop up at regular intervals. Waldo Emerson's step-grandfather was the prominent pastor, Ezra Ripley, and Gross casts him as a pillar of the Old Guard, the generation of the Revolution, who believed that inter-connectedness among the citizenry was vital to its health. Individuality was regularly sacrificed on the altar of a shared ethos. John Thoreau Sr., Henry's father, was a struggling pencil manufacturer who walked a careful line through the minefield of social jockeying in town. He was a member of the lyceum because he was interested in new ideas, but he was never invited to join the Social Circle, a club where the economic elite hobnobbed and made deals.
The second half of the narrative, which shares its title with the book itself, fits Transcendentalism into the story of Concord. The main point that Gross wants to make it that the focus on the development of the individual, what we might now call "self actualization," very much flew in the face of the societal norms of this place and time. Waldo Emerson comes down to us as a rather fussy, difficult-to-understand writer, but Gross tries very hard to show how revolutionary his words were in context. But he also shows how his feet were very much made of clay with respect to some important social issues.
Although the role of women gets a fair amount of attention in this book, for some reason Margaret Fuller, who was both a Transcendentalist and a feminist, gets short shrift. Perhaps she in herself is just too big a personality and would have taken over the narrative. Instead we regularly check in on Henry Thoreau's mother and his aunts, who were active in the movement that broke up the unity of the religious community and were later prominent in the abolitionist movement. Gross explores the lives of several other women, some from socially prominent families and some not, through close attention to diaries and public records. The portraits he creates are sometimes painful to read. This was a period of history during which women were actually losing social power in some ways as the Victorian period approached. Emerson, it must be said, was manifestly uninterested in equity for women.
Emerson's tardy embrace of abolitionism was due to a combination of his ingrained prejudices (he is, without a doubt, a racist) and his principled refusal to join any mass movement (or at least not be an early adopter). It was the conviction of the Transcendentalists that if you focused on becoming who you really are, then you would move through your community in such a way as to make it a better place. Mass movements, of course, tell other people how they should improve themselves. The written record, which is all Gross has to go on, does not seem to preserve Emerson's struggle with himself over the topic of slavery and what to do about it, but the historian is able to create a timeline during which we watch the philosopher change his mind and therefore his self. There is no Saul-on-the-road sort of drama. Instead, there is a transformation that takes place over years.
Henry Thoreau, on the other hand, is shown to be the doer in all ways that Emerson was more or less the talker. The younger man remains in many ways more of an enigma than his mentor. His early life is shown to be a socially diffident one. Reading between the lines, one wonders whether Thoreau had some mild form of autism. In his youth he seemed unable to join in any proverbial reindeer games. After his return from Harvard he made an attempt to be involved in the community on terms he could countenance. But his decision at Walden Pond to "live deliberately" constituted a road-to-Damascus moment (albeit one two years long) that set the course for the rest of his life.
Gross is a historian and not a philosopher, so his goal is to set the Transcendentalist in a local historical context, not to explain Transcendentalism. However, I did come away from this book with a much better understanding of the philosophy and I did find it helpful to get the historical perspective. Gross is not explicit or scientific about a proof, but he does make a good case for why this movement started in Concord, Massachusetts and not somewhere else.
August 8, 2023
A masterful study of Concord, Massachusetts during the first half of the 19th century, providing the social, economic, cultural, religious, and political context of Transcendentalism and its main figures. Highly recommended and very rewarding for describing the world in which Emerson, Thoreau, and others developed their ideas and helped determine the direction that intellectual life in America took.
September 8, 2022
(3.5 stars) I usually round down with half star ratings, but the depth and thoroughness of Gross’ research alone render this an impressive book. I worry that my own impatience as a reader led me to find this book unevenly engaging, ranging from minutiae regarding the history of Concord (that I found difficult to absorb) to insightful descriptions of larger historical patterns (that add shades of meaning to Emerson and Thoreau’s ideas and writings). The lengthy acknowledgements section at the end of the book offers delightful insight into the four decades that Gross devoted to the writing of this book.
July 2, 2022
A history of the town of Concord, Massachusetts, essentially from the years 1825-1848, down to the most publicly known of micro detail.
Brief warning before you read on: this is not a group biography of the Transcendentalists. It is much more about their world and how it impacted the development of Transcendentalism. It literally ends with the publication of Walden. The new facts are the cultural details surrounding them and not per se any new evidence on their biographies.
That being said, this is a splendid book on the intellectual and literary group. I visited Concord for the first time this month and my recent memory of the layout of the town helped my reading of this book tremendously as it refers to many geographical details. The scene opens on the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Concord, April 19, 1825, and the battle within Concord over how to memorialize their cause celebre. As it turns out, Concord isn't totally in concord, and part of the reason has a direct link to Emerson.
The book covers an astonishing level of social, cultural, economic, and local detail, with the first half (300+pps) immersing us into the developing worlds of market economics, education, local politics, ecclesiastical reform, intellectual circles, and even environmental design. The essential thesis is that the emerging developments in the early nineteenth century, as mirrored in the town of Concord, began to dissolve the bonds of friendship and commonality within the town, and the result opened a pathway for Emerson and his circle to develop their ministry of self reliance. Once the reader begins to hear of Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller, Alcott, and Hawthorne, we come to see them emerge from the world we have immersed ourselves in for a substantial amount of time. We can see how those personages fit within the established framework of Concord, as well as how they transgressed and transcended it.
The book is for Transcendentalist fanatics, lovers of Concord MA, and deep, rich, cultural and intellectual history. David S. Reynolds comes to mind as a comparison. Without reservation, Gross is to be applauded for the depth of the research.
Brief warning before you read on: this is not a group biography of the Transcendentalists. It is much more about their world and how it impacted the development of Transcendentalism. It literally ends with the publication of Walden. The new facts are the cultural details surrounding them and not per se any new evidence on their biographies.
That being said, this is a splendid book on the intellectual and literary group. I visited Concord for the first time this month and my recent memory of the layout of the town helped my reading of this book tremendously as it refers to many geographical details. The scene opens on the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Concord, April 19, 1825, and the battle within Concord over how to memorialize their cause celebre. As it turns out, Concord isn't totally in concord, and part of the reason has a direct link to Emerson.
The book covers an astonishing level of social, cultural, economic, and local detail, with the first half (300+pps) immersing us into the developing worlds of market economics, education, local politics, ecclesiastical reform, intellectual circles, and even environmental design. The essential thesis is that the emerging developments in the early nineteenth century, as mirrored in the town of Concord, began to dissolve the bonds of friendship and commonality within the town, and the result opened a pathway for Emerson and his circle to develop their ministry of self reliance. Once the reader begins to hear of Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller, Alcott, and Hawthorne, we come to see them emerge from the world we have immersed ourselves in for a substantial amount of time. We can see how those personages fit within the established framework of Concord, as well as how they transgressed and transcended it.
The book is for Transcendentalist fanatics, lovers of Concord MA, and deep, rich, cultural and intellectual history. David S. Reynolds comes to mind as a comparison. Without reservation, Gross is to be applauded for the depth of the research.
May 17, 2022
Forty five years is a long time in history! And let’s be real, a somewhat less long time in the rather slow-moving world of academic history. Robert Gross started “The Minutemen and Their World” near the high water mark of social history in the American academy. Minute studies of New England towns were in! It helped that we Yankees are meticulous record keepers. There’s a cruel parody of every historiographical school implicit in its work, no matter how generative. The American social historians never had that Hobsbawm-Thompson of their British counterparts/inspirations. You kind of got the idea they thought they were getting away with something. “We can… we can parse old tax records and not make a point about them but consider it ‘history from below’ because it’s not about famous people?!”
Anyhoo, Gross saw where the wind was blowing and he was writing just before the bicentennial, so he got to have his cake and eat it too. He could comb the finely-kept records of the Concord burghers, and tie it in to a larger political point, i.e., how did these people convince themselves to take on an Empire they were just recently pretty proud to be in on?
Truth be told there’s more burgherdom than revolution — more “world” than “Minutemen” — but honestly, that’s ok. Concord was a world on the move! You might just assume it would be anyway because it was a colony, all rough and new. But it was a hundred fifty years old by 1775! It was the first Puritan settlement away from the sight of the ocean in Massachusetts. Moreover, the Puritan fathers weren’t… well, it’s complicated, and Gross doesn’t analyze it closely. The Puritans were capitalists, some of the most important proto-capitalists. But they really didn’t seem to think a lot about the potentially socially corrosive effects of capitalism, or if they did, they thought that, I don’t know, prayer and surveillance could fix it?
I was going to say the Puritans weren’t big “opportunity people,” and maybe that is right- their capitalism was the frowny Weberian kind, where you thank your stern god for his sufficiency. They were “harmony people.” They wanted everyone on the same page. They wanted to do a Heaven LARP until god pulled the plug on this whole “material reality” farce. What did that mean a century and a half on? It meant Concord didn’t know how they were going to keep sons on the farm. Land was expensive and not super great to begin with. Open lands in places we don’t think of now as “open land” — Worcester County! Vermont! — beckoned. Social control was strict in Concord and people got in big theological pissing contests. They were definitely better off than they’d likely be in Britain. But they weren’t as well off as they’d like.
A general rise of individualism connects “The Minutemen and Their World” and the book released forty five years later, “The Transcendentalists and Their World.” The Minutemen beat the British! That was unexpected! It helps that the British used relative kid gloves on them, as fellow white English-speaking Protestants. About fifty years later, Concord is going pretty well after recovering from the time of troubles around 1812, but still needs to figure out what exactly it’s for, other than a springboard to places west. Industrialization is creeping in, and going past the traditional mechanic-operator-owned shops to big mills worked by a proletariat. Lowell is in full swing and often wants to steal the courthouse — it was a good thing to have the county courthouse in your town back then — from Concord, which the townsfolk fend off with their establishment political muscle. Even as Puritanism receded, the established political powers of New England sought harmony and order over most other social considerations.
How you gonna keep ‘em down on the farm once they’ve seen Andy? Andy Jackson, that is. Jackson never won Massachusetts, or came close (New Hampshire, on the other hand…). But Jacksonian politics shattered New England’s elite-run politics. In some places, including Concord, it took the form of Anti-Masonic politics. A lot of big shots in Concord (and elsewhere, including a certain Tennessean President) were Freemasons, so inchoate populism streamed that way (a similar dynamic prevailed with the Know-Nothings a generation later). Even where Jackson’s enemies prevailed, they had to learn to play the game on something like his terms, appealing to the populace, modifying old laws, and in general learning to act in a master-race-democracy polity rather than an (also racist) aristocratic-republican one. Say what you will, but he put himself at the head of a political shift that knew what time it was.
What did all that mean for Concord and the Transcendentalists? Well… vibes, I guess? A general effort to figure out a society where there was — along with everything else — a pretty unprecedented degree of individual opportunity? I can hear people flinching away from that. I know! Most people didn’t have a lot of opportunity. I know that “opportunity” is one of those sacred words like “courage” (we don’t want to say Andrew Jackson had that, because it’s sacred and he was bad, but…). But… maybe it shouldn’t be? Maybe it’s purely fucking circumstantial? Maybe people shouldn’t need a fairy godmother of opportunity to bless them to have a decent life? And every other empire on earth had similar structures keeping out-groups from accessing the fairy godmother, and a smaller in-group. That’s all I’m saying about America. It figured out how to do a big in-group. Slavery and the destruction and dispossession of indigenous people was a prerequisite for it. I’m not saying it was great.
And, in many respects, the Transcendentalists became the poets and philosophers of that society and its opportunities. There were others, and vast portions of that society — anyone south of New York, basically — had nothing good to say about Emerson, Thoreau, or their milieu. But, like Yankees playing the Jacksonian politics game, eventually, Southrons learned to play the Emersonian personhood game. Emerson, for his part, learned it by navigating between various factions in and around Concord. There’s the elitism of the high toned Whigs, but spiritualized- anyone could be a great soul, just like Jacksonian Democracy promised (to whites). Emerson’s Concord was only a few years out from the Unitarians basically hijacking the Massachusetts religious establishment, and a lot of Emerson’s idea of man’s relationship to the spiritual world came from them… but the Trinitarians (which eventually became Congregationalists), who held to something like the orthodox New England faith, showed how emotional appeals could actually touch people, in the way that chilly Unitarian reasonability couldn’t, so Emerson learned to take from that, too. He talked reform and was at least somewhat anti-slavery… but the real reform, as far as he was concerned, was realizing you are, in fact, fantastic, if only you realize it, the original notionally-progressive self-help hack.
Honestly, I see more of this in Emerson than European romanticism, but what do I know? It surprises me that a curmudgeon like Carlyle would hang with this dude, but Emerson could be a mean prick too, and you gotta figure Carlyle wouldn’t look the gift horse of an American publicist in the mouth… people in the expanding south and west might have seen Emerson’s irreligion and light-abolitionism as a threat (you have to figure they just thought Thoreau was a piker and fake), but they embraced something of his anything goes — except politics! which are stupid — ethos, the idea that the individual is the basis of all good, not necessarily because said individual is the ol’ image-and-likeness, but not not because of that, either! Because Emerson copped more attitudes than he actually staked claims, it’s possible to integrate him into all kinds of projects of personal fulfillment. The South would soon be so thoroughly dominated by slaver politics that you couldn’t afford to praise Emerson for generations hence, but again- Jackson never got close to winning Massachusetts, either.
Like the Minutemen book, the Transcendentalists book is more “world” than the subjects, and honestly, that’s a good thing. As you can probably tell I am not a fan of the Transcendentalists. It’s hard out there, for an appreciator of New England’s intellectual heritage who doesn’t actually like a lot of New England thinkers! Gross, forty-five years into a tenured career, sees it all for the good. It probably was, for him. Anyway! This was respectable social history with a good intellectual soupçon. ****/****’
Anyhoo, Gross saw where the wind was blowing and he was writing just before the bicentennial, so he got to have his cake and eat it too. He could comb the finely-kept records of the Concord burghers, and tie it in to a larger political point, i.e., how did these people convince themselves to take on an Empire they were just recently pretty proud to be in on?
Truth be told there’s more burgherdom than revolution — more “world” than “Minutemen” — but honestly, that’s ok. Concord was a world on the move! You might just assume it would be anyway because it was a colony, all rough and new. But it was a hundred fifty years old by 1775! It was the first Puritan settlement away from the sight of the ocean in Massachusetts. Moreover, the Puritan fathers weren’t… well, it’s complicated, and Gross doesn’t analyze it closely. The Puritans were capitalists, some of the most important proto-capitalists. But they really didn’t seem to think a lot about the potentially socially corrosive effects of capitalism, or if they did, they thought that, I don’t know, prayer and surveillance could fix it?
I was going to say the Puritans weren’t big “opportunity people,” and maybe that is right- their capitalism was the frowny Weberian kind, where you thank your stern god for his sufficiency. They were “harmony people.” They wanted everyone on the same page. They wanted to do a Heaven LARP until god pulled the plug on this whole “material reality” farce. What did that mean a century and a half on? It meant Concord didn’t know how they were going to keep sons on the farm. Land was expensive and not super great to begin with. Open lands in places we don’t think of now as “open land” — Worcester County! Vermont! — beckoned. Social control was strict in Concord and people got in big theological pissing contests. They were definitely better off than they’d likely be in Britain. But they weren’t as well off as they’d like.
A general rise of individualism connects “The Minutemen and Their World” and the book released forty five years later, “The Transcendentalists and Their World.” The Minutemen beat the British! That was unexpected! It helps that the British used relative kid gloves on them, as fellow white English-speaking Protestants. About fifty years later, Concord is going pretty well after recovering from the time of troubles around 1812, but still needs to figure out what exactly it’s for, other than a springboard to places west. Industrialization is creeping in, and going past the traditional mechanic-operator-owned shops to big mills worked by a proletariat. Lowell is in full swing and often wants to steal the courthouse — it was a good thing to have the county courthouse in your town back then — from Concord, which the townsfolk fend off with their establishment political muscle. Even as Puritanism receded, the established political powers of New England sought harmony and order over most other social considerations.
How you gonna keep ‘em down on the farm once they’ve seen Andy? Andy Jackson, that is. Jackson never won Massachusetts, or came close (New Hampshire, on the other hand…). But Jacksonian politics shattered New England’s elite-run politics. In some places, including Concord, it took the form of Anti-Masonic politics. A lot of big shots in Concord (and elsewhere, including a certain Tennessean President) were Freemasons, so inchoate populism streamed that way (a similar dynamic prevailed with the Know-Nothings a generation later). Even where Jackson’s enemies prevailed, they had to learn to play the game on something like his terms, appealing to the populace, modifying old laws, and in general learning to act in a master-race-democracy polity rather than an (also racist) aristocratic-republican one. Say what you will, but he put himself at the head of a political shift that knew what time it was.
What did all that mean for Concord and the Transcendentalists? Well… vibes, I guess? A general effort to figure out a society where there was — along with everything else — a pretty unprecedented degree of individual opportunity? I can hear people flinching away from that. I know! Most people didn’t have a lot of opportunity. I know that “opportunity” is one of those sacred words like “courage” (we don’t want to say Andrew Jackson had that, because it’s sacred and he was bad, but…). But… maybe it shouldn’t be? Maybe it’s purely fucking circumstantial? Maybe people shouldn’t need a fairy godmother of opportunity to bless them to have a decent life? And every other empire on earth had similar structures keeping out-groups from accessing the fairy godmother, and a smaller in-group. That’s all I’m saying about America. It figured out how to do a big in-group. Slavery and the destruction and dispossession of indigenous people was a prerequisite for it. I’m not saying it was great.
And, in many respects, the Transcendentalists became the poets and philosophers of that society and its opportunities. There were others, and vast portions of that society — anyone south of New York, basically — had nothing good to say about Emerson, Thoreau, or their milieu. But, like Yankees playing the Jacksonian politics game, eventually, Southrons learned to play the Emersonian personhood game. Emerson, for his part, learned it by navigating between various factions in and around Concord. There’s the elitism of the high toned Whigs, but spiritualized- anyone could be a great soul, just like Jacksonian Democracy promised (to whites). Emerson’s Concord was only a few years out from the Unitarians basically hijacking the Massachusetts religious establishment, and a lot of Emerson’s idea of man’s relationship to the spiritual world came from them… but the Trinitarians (which eventually became Congregationalists), who held to something like the orthodox New England faith, showed how emotional appeals could actually touch people, in the way that chilly Unitarian reasonability couldn’t, so Emerson learned to take from that, too. He talked reform and was at least somewhat anti-slavery… but the real reform, as far as he was concerned, was realizing you are, in fact, fantastic, if only you realize it, the original notionally-progressive self-help hack.
Honestly, I see more of this in Emerson than European romanticism, but what do I know? It surprises me that a curmudgeon like Carlyle would hang with this dude, but Emerson could be a mean prick too, and you gotta figure Carlyle wouldn’t look the gift horse of an American publicist in the mouth… people in the expanding south and west might have seen Emerson’s irreligion and light-abolitionism as a threat (you have to figure they just thought Thoreau was a piker and fake), but they embraced something of his anything goes — except politics! which are stupid — ethos, the idea that the individual is the basis of all good, not necessarily because said individual is the ol’ image-and-likeness, but not not because of that, either! Because Emerson copped more attitudes than he actually staked claims, it’s possible to integrate him into all kinds of projects of personal fulfillment. The South would soon be so thoroughly dominated by slaver politics that you couldn’t afford to praise Emerson for generations hence, but again- Jackson never got close to winning Massachusetts, either.
Like the Minutemen book, the Transcendentalists book is more “world” than the subjects, and honestly, that’s a good thing. As you can probably tell I am not a fan of the Transcendentalists. It’s hard out there, for an appreciator of New England’s intellectual heritage who doesn’t actually like a lot of New England thinkers! Gross, forty-five years into a tenured career, sees it all for the good. It probably was, for him. Anyway! This was respectable social history with a good intellectual soupçon. ****/****’
January 10, 2023
This well-researched and clearly written book is somewhat mistitled. It should be Concord--from revolution to industrial revolution. In fact, it is a very clear study of how the people of this important town--ministers, politicians, businesspeople--changed it. Anyone who is interested in the various movements of the time--the great awakening, anti-masonic movement, abolition, immigration, industrialization--will read this book with interest. The two people most identified with Concord -- Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson -- figure importantly, but their impact is not really detailed.
July 31, 2022
a quite brilliant history of Concord, MA with Emerson and Thoreau. The first part sets the stage for the coming of transcendentalism and why Concord was the right place for it to start. Robert Gross's research reveals a great deal about Concord and the American 1800-1845. Much of this I knew already, or had surmised, but the set up and narrative voices is great. I learned a great deal over the 613 pages of the text.
Read
September 10, 2024I should have given up, but I kept hoping it would get better. It didn’t get better.
October 22, 2022
Robert A. Gross’s The Transcendentalists and Their World is a comprehensive study of life in the early 1800s in Concord, Massachusetts. This book amplified on the conflict between a community mindset versus a focus on an individualistic orientation. This tension was captured in the first part of the book that described Concord before the 1830s. The second half dealt mainly with the lives of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and the anti-abolition movement.
Early life in Concord was dominated by its First Church, farming, politics, school, and the militia. Its pastor was Ezra Ripley and all residents were expected to attend church. Concord paid the bills for Ripley’s service. Many residents in this community were farmers, and the Whigs controlled politics. Only White males were allowed to vote. The society had a grammar school for young children, and young men served in the militia. Ripley’s church was liberal because it was open to changes in order to keep its flock. He preached sermons based on the gospels, and stressed the congregation’s interdependency to fellow citizens. The church was therefore community oriented.
Just prior to 1835, Ripley’s concept of community and the church began to crumble. There was a change taking place in the social order. The Thoreau sisters who were members of the First Church decided to form their own group. They were provided with support from Calvinists in Boston, and this led to the Trinitarians. Other changes brought about the genesis of other faiths including the Unitarians and Universalists. It was during this time that there were developments in the economy, railway, establishments of more schools, growth of political parties, the rise of the Social Circle, lyceum, and the beginnings of an Anti-Masonry movement.
Thoreau grew up in Concord, and received an education in its grammar schools, he later attended Harvard. His father was a pencil maker. Unlike Thoreau, Emerson settled in Concord in 1835, after having graduated from Harvard, and traveled in Europe. He received his Transcendental ideas from German idealists, Thomas Carlyle, and William Wordsworth. Concord with a population of 2,000 was ideal because of the size of the community. It wasn’t like Boston, New York, or Philadelphia where there existed masses of people and a mass culture. In Concord, Emerson could interact with individuals.
Emerson’s and Thoreau’s writings emphasized the importance of the individual in a culture. Their arguments were infused with democratic beliefs. Emerson viewed religion as not a building, a doctrine, or government. In the Philosophy of Modern History, he saw education as the guardianship of every individual, and wrote his philosophy was an answer to the needs of people. He was however slow in joining the bandwagon of the anti-slavery movement, but later came out with a strong speech on the abolition of slavery on the West Indian Emancipation Act of 1833.
Thoreau lived for some time in Emerson’s manse with his family. He had taught school, but is known for living in a hut surrounded by nature for a little over two years at Walden. While living there Thoreau read, wrote, went for walks, and grew his own food. In 1846, he was jailed for refusing to pay taxes. Thoreau is known for his writing about Walden, and his piece on civil disobedience.
Early life in Concord was dominated by its First Church, farming, politics, school, and the militia. Its pastor was Ezra Ripley and all residents were expected to attend church. Concord paid the bills for Ripley’s service. Many residents in this community were farmers, and the Whigs controlled politics. Only White males were allowed to vote. The society had a grammar school for young children, and young men served in the militia. Ripley’s church was liberal because it was open to changes in order to keep its flock. He preached sermons based on the gospels, and stressed the congregation’s interdependency to fellow citizens. The church was therefore community oriented.
Just prior to 1835, Ripley’s concept of community and the church began to crumble. There was a change taking place in the social order. The Thoreau sisters who were members of the First Church decided to form their own group. They were provided with support from Calvinists in Boston, and this led to the Trinitarians. Other changes brought about the genesis of other faiths including the Unitarians and Universalists. It was during this time that there were developments in the economy, railway, establishments of more schools, growth of political parties, the rise of the Social Circle, lyceum, and the beginnings of an Anti-Masonry movement.
Thoreau grew up in Concord, and received an education in its grammar schools, he later attended Harvard. His father was a pencil maker. Unlike Thoreau, Emerson settled in Concord in 1835, after having graduated from Harvard, and traveled in Europe. He received his Transcendental ideas from German idealists, Thomas Carlyle, and William Wordsworth. Concord with a population of 2,000 was ideal because of the size of the community. It wasn’t like Boston, New York, or Philadelphia where there existed masses of people and a mass culture. In Concord, Emerson could interact with individuals.
Emerson’s and Thoreau’s writings emphasized the importance of the individual in a culture. Their arguments were infused with democratic beliefs. Emerson viewed religion as not a building, a doctrine, or government. In the Philosophy of Modern History, he saw education as the guardianship of every individual, and wrote his philosophy was an answer to the needs of people. He was however slow in joining the bandwagon of the anti-slavery movement, but later came out with a strong speech on the abolition of slavery on the West Indian Emancipation Act of 1833.
Thoreau lived for some time in Emerson’s manse with his family. He had taught school, but is known for living in a hut surrounded by nature for a little over two years at Walden. While living there Thoreau read, wrote, went for walks, and grew his own food. In 1846, he was jailed for refusing to pay taxes. Thoreau is known for his writing about Walden, and his piece on civil disobedience.
May 16, 2022
The emphasis in this book is the second part of the title; the World of the Transcendentalists, with the world being Concord. We learn much about Concord of the time, the feud with Lexington over who deserves prominence for the beginning of the Revolutionary War, the local political campaigns including the later Mason vs Anti-Mason factions, the different farmers and their techniques, the business development of the town, the internecine battles of its churches. That in depth discussion will appeal to scholars and serious students of the time, it may try the patience of the general reading public such as myself.
The book does include enlightening discussion of transcendentalism including some of the best descriptions of what it truly was. For example, " The avant-garde of Unitarian thinkers transcended the orthodox-liberal divide. Unlike their denominational colleagues, they sided with the revivalists and welcomed emotional expression in religion. But in contrast to the Calvinists, they trusted the sentiments of the heart. Human nature was free of innate corruption ; it not require redemption through the experience of saving grace. Transcendentalist ministers dd not rail against sin and invoke the terrors of hell in order to break the wills of the unregenerate and drive them distraught and sobbing, into the arms of Jesus. Rather, they appealed to the better angels of parishioners, in the confidence that the ' deep wants of our nature lead us to God' In like manner they expounded on the principles of morality in which every person, if true to eternal laws intrinsic to the self, would assent. The 'Conscience' is ' the voice of God in the Soul of Man'"
The book also has the best discussion of the warts of transcendentalism. The emphasis on self-reliance and inner nature leads to a detachment from community and helping others, the book brought that home with its description of a transcendentalist questioned at the end of a lecture about how much he gave to charity.
This limitation carried over to the reluctance of transcendentalists to become involved in the abolitionist movement illustrated by a quote from Emerson" Does he not do more to abolish slavery who works all day steadily in his garden than he who goes to abolition meetings and make speeches?"
Though it would not be fair to lump Thoreau in with that attitude, as discussed by Laura Walls in her biography of Thoreau, he risked his life by hosting fugitive slaves at his home and taking them along sections of the Underground Railroad to Canada.
Again, there is much to appreciate about this book, but many of us general readers may find ourselves doing a lot of skimming in the detailed descriptions of Concord Life
The book does include enlightening discussion of transcendentalism including some of the best descriptions of what it truly was. For example, " The avant-garde of Unitarian thinkers transcended the orthodox-liberal divide. Unlike their denominational colleagues, they sided with the revivalists and welcomed emotional expression in religion. But in contrast to the Calvinists, they trusted the sentiments of the heart. Human nature was free of innate corruption ; it not require redemption through the experience of saving grace. Transcendentalist ministers dd not rail against sin and invoke the terrors of hell in order to break the wills of the unregenerate and drive them distraught and sobbing, into the arms of Jesus. Rather, they appealed to the better angels of parishioners, in the confidence that the ' deep wants of our nature lead us to God' In like manner they expounded on the principles of morality in which every person, if true to eternal laws intrinsic to the self, would assent. The 'Conscience' is ' the voice of God in the Soul of Man'"
The book also has the best discussion of the warts of transcendentalism. The emphasis on self-reliance and inner nature leads to a detachment from community and helping others, the book brought that home with its description of a transcendentalist questioned at the end of a lecture about how much he gave to charity.
This limitation carried over to the reluctance of transcendentalists to become involved in the abolitionist movement illustrated by a quote from Emerson" Does he not do more to abolish slavery who works all day steadily in his garden than he who goes to abolition meetings and make speeches?"
Though it would not be fair to lump Thoreau in with that attitude, as discussed by Laura Walls in her biography of Thoreau, he risked his life by hosting fugitive slaves at his home and taking them along sections of the Underground Railroad to Canada.
Again, there is much to appreciate about this book, but many of us general readers may find ourselves doing a lot of skimming in the detailed descriptions of Concord Life
May 2, 2022
A very detailed look at Concord, Massachusetts in the early to mid Nineteenth Century. The book aims to give historical context to the lives and times of the Transcendentalists and it succeeds at that quite well. I really feel as if I understand what it must have been like to walk the lanes and sit in the local gatherings of citizens in Concord in the 1820s, 30s, 40s. At times the level of detail was enough to make me feel a bit trapped in the local interests and intrigues, wanting to fly higher above the local to get a broader view of the country at this time, to see what was happening in Washington D.C. in this time of Jacksonian democracy, to see what it was like out on the edge of he country's westward expansion, to see what was happening in the South in the decades before he Civil War, but this book is not about that. It maintains its local Concord focus with its goal to help reach right down to touch native soil and breath in the native air of American Transcendentalism, which was really quite local and centered on Concord.
My main impression is that during the 1820s and on into the 1840s in Concord a move from communitarian values to individualism is underway. (Although one version of this was to form a communal farm of others seeking to express an individual life outside the capitalist one.) People seem to be becoming less concerned with how education can make one of use to the community and more with how education can help an individual realize their full potential. Industrialization and the transience brought about by the westward expansion, created a ferment of change that broke up the Unitarian core of Concord and allowed new ideas and philosophy about the role of the individual in society to emerge. I had the sense that this was not a violent change but more of an evolution of thinking and realization of what had already been present in the community before the changing times allowed it to become central.
The most familiar figures of the movement are discussed at some length. The portrait of Emerson is not completely flattering. He was a bit of an elitist, unwilling to take public stands about issues that split the community, at least for much of his life, and it would seem that his philosophy asked very little of him personally and served to allow him to do just pretty much as he pleased. Henry Thoreau too is not heroic in the telling here. He is a bit foolish and ineffectual, or maybe just spacey, until given a rent-free home at Walden Pond where he finds time to write and discover what he wants to say. Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne all gain context in the telling here. I am eager to go back and read them again to see how my perception might shift based on knowing more about the world they moved in. Bottom line, the book gives one a deep appreciation of life in Concord in the first half of the 19th Century and that does give one perspective on the Transcendentalists and by being very local, it also gives a useful and granular portrait of a key part of America at this time. On that basis I'd really recommend it to anyone interested in knowing what it was like to live in New England at that time.
My main impression is that during the 1820s and on into the 1840s in Concord a move from communitarian values to individualism is underway. (Although one version of this was to form a communal farm of others seeking to express an individual life outside the capitalist one.) People seem to be becoming less concerned with how education can make one of use to the community and more with how education can help an individual realize their full potential. Industrialization and the transience brought about by the westward expansion, created a ferment of change that broke up the Unitarian core of Concord and allowed new ideas and philosophy about the role of the individual in society to emerge. I had the sense that this was not a violent change but more of an evolution of thinking and realization of what had already been present in the community before the changing times allowed it to become central.
The most familiar figures of the movement are discussed at some length. The portrait of Emerson is not completely flattering. He was a bit of an elitist, unwilling to take public stands about issues that split the community, at least for much of his life, and it would seem that his philosophy asked very little of him personally and served to allow him to do just pretty much as he pleased. Henry Thoreau too is not heroic in the telling here. He is a bit foolish and ineffectual, or maybe just spacey, until given a rent-free home at Walden Pond where he finds time to write and discover what he wants to say. Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne all gain context in the telling here. I am eager to go back and read them again to see how my perception might shift based on knowing more about the world they moved in. Bottom line, the book gives one a deep appreciation of life in Concord in the first half of the 19th Century and that does give one perspective on the Transcendentalists and by being very local, it also gives a useful and granular portrait of a key part of America at this time. On that basis I'd really recommend it to anyone interested in knowing what it was like to live in New England at that time.
July 11, 2023
Pretty impressive work, almost two separate works in that the first half is an elegant info sprinkling about Concord and the region, the changing economy, weather, infrastructure, the rise and fall of fortunes and institutions and families -- all in a successful, unhurried attempt to test the soil that gave rise to transcendentalism. The churches and beliefs and circulation of ideas and books and newspapers, and the continuity of church leaders and local historians who kept the revolution front and center. The rivalry between Concord and Lexington is a hoot and speaks to the unapologetic provincialism of the region, only somewhat diminished by the arrival of the railroad in the 1840s. This part of the book reminds me of Alan Taylor's William Cooper's Town in which town life is related with great texture, including profiles of then notable but now little know figures, and descriptions of industries such as pencil making here and potash manufacturing in Cooperstown.
The second half of the book puts more focus on Emerson and Thoreau, yet their families are never far from the discussion. The women of Concord, of New England, it turns out, were the leading reformers and abolitionists. The men latecomers, especially Emerson, who comes off as a bit of a boob with his fierce individualism and willingness to address ideas only of his own primary concern. Yes, he was bad on Blacks and women and their full equality, at least in his early years, and a bit of a righteous prig in his denunciation of Harvard, the Unitarians, and anyone else he thought wasn't up to snuff. But he came around. The best thing about the book is that it shows New England not to be a bloc of Conscience Whigs, but a place where ideas were always contested and in flux.
And then there is Henry David Thoreau, as fiercely dependent on the material support of others as he is committed to a fierce independence and anti-materialism. Not so much a hypocrite as a searcher, fumbling his way forward. But in the end a true conscientious objector to society, a product of that native soil and its peculiar mix of nutrients.
Brownson, Fuller, Channing, Alcott and the others associated with the movement only make cameo appearances. But there's a great chapter on several young people in Concord and their grappling with Emerson's ideas and their decisions to embrace or reject transcendentalism. A real social history of ideas here.
The second half of the book puts more focus on Emerson and Thoreau, yet their families are never far from the discussion. The women of Concord, of New England, it turns out, were the leading reformers and abolitionists. The men latecomers, especially Emerson, who comes off as a bit of a boob with his fierce individualism and willingness to address ideas only of his own primary concern. Yes, he was bad on Blacks and women and their full equality, at least in his early years, and a bit of a righteous prig in his denunciation of Harvard, the Unitarians, and anyone else he thought wasn't up to snuff. But he came around. The best thing about the book is that it shows New England not to be a bloc of Conscience Whigs, but a place where ideas were always contested and in flux.
And then there is Henry David Thoreau, as fiercely dependent on the material support of others as he is committed to a fierce independence and anti-materialism. Not so much a hypocrite as a searcher, fumbling his way forward. But in the end a true conscientious objector to society, a product of that native soil and its peculiar mix of nutrients.
Brownson, Fuller, Channing, Alcott and the others associated with the movement only make cameo appearances. But there's a great chapter on several young people in Concord and their grappling with Emerson's ideas and their decisions to embrace or reject transcendentalism. A real social history of ideas here.
April 19, 2023
As many others have noted, this book is really focused more on the latter part of its title. The center of its orbit is the political, religious, economic, and social history of Concord in the third and fourth decades of the 19th century. We're introduced to Federalists and Republicans, Democrats and Whigs, Masons and Anti-Masons, Unitarians and Trinitarians, lyceums, temperance reformers, railroads, agricultural societies, and abolitionists. Many of the chapters are related to the main figures of Transcendentalism only indirectly or by association (a relative of Thoreau participated in this social movement, or was a congregation at this church, etc).
The thesis throughout all of this is that far from achieving some heroic independence from the social context of their time, the Transcendentalists were deeply implicated in the economic, political, and religious changes of their time and place. Even without any knowledge of the movement, these seems like a truism that hardly warrants emphasis. It is a tired cliche now that Thoreau's mom did his laundry while at Walden.
Still, I can't rate this book below 4 stars, given it's astonishing level of archival scholarship. It is an incredible portrait of a time and place, and the slow connections it forges at the level of the family and the congregation feels much more like a novel than a conventional history. I can't imagine I'll be able to remember most of these relationships and facts, but that doesn't diminish at all the achievement of their presentation, or their value as a background to this intellectual history.
The thesis throughout all of this is that far from achieving some heroic independence from the social context of their time, the Transcendentalists were deeply implicated in the economic, political, and religious changes of their time and place. Even without any knowledge of the movement, these seems like a truism that hardly warrants emphasis. It is a tired cliche now that Thoreau's mom did his laundry while at Walden.
Still, I can't rate this book below 4 stars, given it's astonishing level of archival scholarship. It is an incredible portrait of a time and place, and the slow connections it forges at the level of the family and the congregation feels much more like a novel than a conventional history. I can't imagine I'll be able to remember most of these relationships and facts, but that doesn't diminish at all the achievement of their presentation, or their value as a background to this intellectual history.
May 20, 2023
A wonderful book, full of detailed local history and great portraits of Concord people, including Mary Merrick Brooks, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. To understand how the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony made the transition from its late 18th-century self to a slightly more religiously pluralistic world read this book. There are other books that might illuminate better how the regional variations in the rise of abolitionism worked (where did Charles Finney come in, for example), but this one links the old and new light controversies within mainstream Protestantism to a growing religious pluralism in the Age of Jackson.
Rooted in the solid inquiry of the community studies we loved in the 1970s, this book tells a really engaging story of individuals working their way through several seasons of change. The last three chapters would be the ones I would recommend if you didn't have the patience for the whole long book. But the book is really important and well-crafted.
Rooted in the solid inquiry of the community studies we loved in the 1970s, this book tells a really engaging story of individuals working their way through several seasons of change. The last three chapters would be the ones I would recommend if you didn't have the patience for the whole long book. But the book is really important and well-crafted.
November 11, 2024
As other reviewers have mentioned, this is more a book about Concord during the time of the Transcendentalists than it is a book about the Transcendentalists themselves. I expected this and was looking for a book on the history of Concord during this timeframe so I enjoyed it. It was clearly deeply researched and was well written for a history book with so much content. It was organized into sections based on topics discussed and not totally in chronological order. Thus, I found the dates a bit hard to follow and had to backtrack to double check where I was in the timeline of related events. Otherwise, the book was excellent and I recommend it to anyone interested in the components of the area that shaped Transcendentalism.
September 26, 2022
I'll begin by saying that this is a large, very dense book that's more so written about the historical time period than of the actual philosophy of Transcendentalism. Gross narrates the milieu of 19th-century Concord quite thoroughly, and while at times I was interested, I found myself wishing he'd delve into the principles of Transcendentalism rather than the people and politics of the era.
2.5/5 stars. Full disclaimer, I read about half of the book -- the first half held no particular interest, as it focused more on setting the scene for Transcendentalism than on the events unfolding during the movement.
2.5/5 stars. Full disclaimer, I read about half of the book -- the first half held no particular interest, as it focused more on setting the scene for Transcendentalism than on the events unfolding during the movement.
May 6, 2023
This was an absorbing way to while away a bunch of hours. You really get to know this little town: education, farming, culture, race, etc. The "transcendentalists" piece is a bit of a head fake, Gross uses the Emersons/Thoreaus to talk about the town, more than vice versa, he is not that interested in their ideas beyond the very broad facts that Emerson liked individualism and Thoreau liked nature
August 21, 2023
This is mostly a history book. It's a good one. Its focus is Concord, Massachusetts, a town I know fairly well. I was delighted, as any Thoreauvian, with the last chapter which discusses Walden, Thoreau's masterpiece of meaning and practice trying to explain how transcendentalism can be more than a philosophy but rather a way of life.
January 1, 2024
Informative but dense. It’s history writing at its most frustrating for someone like me. I would get interested and lose interest as the topics strayed from what I cared about. Less transcendentalism here than one would suspect, stopping short of really exploring the developing and latter years of the movement.
August 14, 2025
Should be titled The Transcendentalists World. Most of the book is about the economy of Concord, with little about the Transcendentalists that lived there. What is written about them focuses almost entirely on Emerson and Thoreau. Very little is mentioned about the Transcendentalists drawn to Concord because of those men.
August 7, 2023
A totally misleading title for this book! It is really a social history of Concord, MA and has less to do with the theory and influence of the Transcendentalist. I was disappointed. Though I have to say, it made for a pretty good history lesson.
January 5, 2024
If you're super into the Transcendentalists and you want to know everything about how they came to be, this is the book for you. If you're a dilettante and would have been happy to read about 200-250 pages on the topic, this is not the book for you.
September 16, 2024
Closer to 3.5. Listened to this in anticipation of a visit to Concord MA to understand more about Transcendentalism. I do understand more now. I would have liked the book better if it was more chronological than topical.
January 29, 2025
Truly a masterpiece and a well researched piece of Americana. For me, the author saved the best for last as the final chapter is an absolute jewel. While it takes a commitment to truly read and absorb a book of this length and detail, it is well worth the reader’s time and attention.
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