Ralph Waldo Emerson

The latest biography of the great transcendentalist captures the paradoxes of his Yankee mind.

A new biography reveals how Ralph Waldo Emerson gave Americans a vocabulary to understand themselves in an era even more tempestuous than our own.

A new book explores the final days of Ralph Waldo Emerson - traveling from Concord to California, and beyond.

How Transcendentalism, the American philosophy that championed the individual, caught on in tight-knit Concord, Massachusetts.

For Ralph Waldo Emerson, political activism was full of empty gestures done in bad faith. Abolition called for true heroism.

How an intense unclassifiable relationship shaped the history of modern thought.

Some Americans who have lost faith in traditional institutions are finding spirituality in this Denver church—and in themselves.

What a little-known family reveals about the nation’s untamed spirit.

The reflections of Emerson, Thoreau, and William James one finds a characteristically nineteenth-century American sense of resilience and regeneration.

In the poetry of Jones Very, whom his contemporaries considered “eccentric” and “mad," the self is detached from everything by an intoxicated egoism.

Literary history is packed into Concord’s “Old Manse,” but the tiny abode of Walden’s author proves the highlight of our New England trip.

The transcendentalists thought all human inspiration was divine, all nature a miracle.

Why do the Transcendentalists still have an outsize influence on American culture?

The writer had a deep bond with his mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson. But he also had a profound connection with Emerson’s wife.

Mark Edmundson on the great American poet as a defender of democracy.

A review on the many publications about Henry David Thoreau's life for the bicentennial anniversary of his birthday.

The surprising persistence of Henry David Thoreau.

The university’s last “finest hour” was more than 200 years ago.

How a myth about farmers taking on the British has fueled more than two centuries of exclusionary nationalism.

Five women who made important contributions to 19th-century American philosophy finally get their due.