Emerson's Protégés: Mentoring and Marketing Transcendentalism's Future
David Dowling
Abstract
In the late 1830s, Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist, poet, lecturer, and leader of the Transcendentalist movement, publicly called for a radical nationwide vocational reinvention, and an idealistic group of collegians eagerly responded. Assuming the role of mentor, editor, and promoter, Emerson freely offered them his time, financial support, and antimaterialistic counsel, and profoundly shaped the careers of his young acolytes—including Henry David Thoreau, renowned journalist and women's rights advocate Margaret Fuller, and lesser-known literary figures such as Samuel Ward and reckless ... More
In the late 1830s, Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist, poet, lecturer, and leader of the Transcendentalist movement, publicly called for a radical nationwide vocational reinvention, and an idealistic group of collegians eagerly responded. Assuming the role of mentor, editor, and promoter, Emerson freely offered them his time, financial support, and antimaterialistic counsel, and profoundly shaped the careers of his young acolytes—including Henry David Thoreau, renowned journalist and women's rights advocate Margaret Fuller, and lesser-known literary figures such as Samuel Ward and reckless romantic poets Jones Very, Ellery Channing, and Charles Newcomb. This book's history of the professional and personal relationships between Emerson and his protégés—a remarkable collaboration that alternately proved fruitful and destructive, tension-filled and liberating—is a fascinating true story of altruism, ego, influence, pettiness, genius, and the bold attempt to reshape the literary market of the mid-nineteenth century.
Keywords:
altruism,
Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Transcendentalist movement,
Henry David Thoreau,
Margaret Fuller,
Samuel Ward,
Jones Very,
Ellery Channing,
Charles Newcomb,
literary market
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2014 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780300197440 |
| Published to Yale Scholarship Online: January 2015 |
DOI:10.12987/yale/9780300197440.001.0001 |
