The First Online Thoreau Conference, if briefly presented, could be described as a collaborative effort between students, scholars, and educators based in Brazil, who are dedicated to the study and outreach of Henry David Thoreau’s work. However, such a description wouldn’t do much justice to the interconnectedness of readers of Thoreau across the globe.
Of all the writers and philosophers who influenced the New England Transcendentalists, none had a bigger impact than Thomas Carlyle. Born in Scotland in 1795, as an essayist, historian, and philosopher, Carlyle had a profound influence on the 19th century, not just in the United Kingdom, but also in America, particularly with the writers in Concord, Massachusetts.
Virtually every member of the Transcendentalist circle read Carlyle’s writings with great enthusiasm; Bronson Alcott, Orestes Brownson, Theodore Parker, William Henry Channing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Frederic Henry Hedge, George Ripley, and Henry Thoreau all drew inspiration from Carlyle. In particular, it was his writings on Germanic literature that lit a flame under the Transcendentalists.
Ralph Waldo Emerson referred to her as Tnumarya, an anagram he created for his beloved aunt, Mary Moody Emerson. Many scholars believe her to be Emerson’s most seminal influencer.
Fiction is a fun introduction to history! Allison Pataki encourages her readers to visit Concord, where her novel is predominately set—to tour the Emerson House, The Old Manse, and Orchard House—as she did while writing. Indeed, shortly after Finding Margaret Fuller: a novel’s publication (Ballentine Books, 2024), book clubs scheduled group tours at Emerson’s home.
Some folks visit Concord for its role in the American Revolution, while others are on a mission to see a favorite author’s home. If you are eager to visit sites related to Concordians who influenced American culture thanks to their connection to Transcendentalism, here is a nice way to turn that interest into a pleasant walk in Concord, Massachusetts.
It was nearly twelve hours since the Elizabeth ran aground on a sandbar in a raging hurricane. Returning home from Italy in July 1850, after years abroad as a foreign correspondent, Margaret Fuller huddled before the ship’s mast, clutching her two-year-old son, as waves violently washed over the deck. Fuller had given her life preserver to a sailor, who swam to shore for help.
Ralph Waldo Emerson lived in Concord for most of his life and probably explored almost every inch of it on foot. As he once said, “I go through Concord as through a park.” Today, we can follow in the footsteps of the “Sage of Concord.”
The Thoreau Society was founded in 1941 to stimulate interest in and foster education about Thoreau’s life, works, and legacy and his place in his world and ours; to encourage research on Thoreau’s life and writings; to act as a repository for Thoreauviana and material relevant to Thoreau; and to advocate for the preservation of Thoreau Country.
“Why Concord?” asks historian Robert A. Gross in the preface to his new book, The Transcendentalists and Their World (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021). One drizzly October afternoon I asked him the same question about his own choice to devote much of his career to examining this singular dot on the map of New England.
“I came to study Concord not because I was interested in the local history,” he said. “I was interested in the local history as it helped to tell a national history. And I’ve come to love living here. I love the fact that I’m telling a large story with broad implications in one place, a place that is not a backwater, not on the margins.”
In the summer of 1842, Concord was like any other New England town. Sitting 18 miles west of Boston, the town of 2,000 souls was still very rural. The railroad wouldn’t come through for another two years, and there was no telegraph yet; only the daily stagecoach and the post office connected Concord to the rest of the world.
