One of the most enigmatic and eccentric figures of the Transcendentalist movement, Charles King Newcomb is better known for his influence on other writers and their works than for the single work that he published in his lifetime. His participation in the Brook Farm experiment of the 1840s led to lifelong friendships with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and other figures of the American Renaissance. A deeply private and reserved man, Newcomb's only published work, "The Two Dolons," reveals only a small kernel of the personality of one of the least-known Transcendentalist writers.

Charles King Newcomb was born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1820 to Henry S. Newcomb (a hero of the War of 1812) and his wife, Rhoda. His father died in a shipwreck in December 1825, but his mother had inherited a small fortune from her father's plantation in the British West Indies and was able to...