William Ellery Channing II (29 November 1817-23 December 1901), in his youth known as a Transcendental poet, is today best remembered as Thoreau's first biographer. He was born at Boston into a well-connected family: his uncles included Washington Allston and the Reverend William Ellery Channing, and his father became dean of the Harvard Medical School. But Ellery Channing refused to follow the path which was opened to him and three months after entering Harvard in 1834, he left the college. Channing stayed on in the Boston area until 1839, when he moved to Illinois and pursued farming. In 1840 he sold his land and took up newspaper work in Cincinnati, where he met Margaret Fuller's sister, Ellen, whom he married in 1841. The Channings returned to Massachusetts in 1842 and the next year they settled in Concord, where Channing became friends with Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau. In October 1840 Emerson had printed a number of Channing's...