Discussing how to strengthen the Dial, Ralph Waldo Emerson suggested to Margaret Fuller that George Henry Calvert be asked to contribute and Fuller understood by this that the journal needed to enlarge its coverage of European literature. A true cosmopolitan, Calvert was a prolific writer of poetry and prose and one of the early translators of German literature in America. Readers prized him less for his artistic and critical skills than for his work in promoting neglected or controversial European masters. One of the group of Americans who pursued postgraduate study at the University of Göttingen (in 1824 he met and became friendly with Emerson's brother William), Calvert was an early translator of Goethe, Schiller, and Joseph Joubert. He also wrote the first American biographies of Goethe, Charlotte von Stein, Rubens, and Wordsworth. He never did write for the Dial.

Calvert ran a curious if ironic parallel...