Origins.

Transcendentalism was a literary, religious, and philosophical movement that began in New England in the 1830s. It had no formal structure or doctrine but rather consisted of the ideas of a group of people who shared a common oudook and interests. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Amos Bronson Alcott, Mar garet Fuller, Orestes Augustus Brownson, and many others met frequently near Boston for conversation and in 1840 began publishing a periodical, The Dial, to express their views. While topics of discussion ranged over a variety of subjects from education to slavery to the distinctiveness of the American character, most Transcendentalists saw the movement as essentially spiritual. Like many others of their day, they were religious seekers with enthusiasm for utopianism and social reform. They were distinguished, however, by the intellectual rigor with which they explored their interests and their incorporation of a wide variety of traditions, including...