Moreover, the Transcendentalists were only loosely connected with one another. They were not a cohesive, organized group who shared a formal doctrine. They were distinct and independent individuals who accepted some basic premises about man's place in the universe.
Transcendentalism flourished in the intellectual centers of Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts, and, because of Ralph Waldo Emerson's presence, in nearby Concord as well. Emerson moved to Concord in 1834 and bought a home on the Cambridge Turnpike in 1835. His essay Nature, a systematic exposition of the main principles of Transcendentalism, was published anonymously in 1836. Its publication sparked a period of intense intellectual ferment and literary activity.
Although it was based in part on ancient ideas (the philosophy of Plato, for example), Transcendentalism was in many ways a radical movement, threatening to established religion. Some people opposed Transcendentalism vigorously. One of its most reactionary critics was Harvard professor Andrews Norton, who attacked Emerson's "Divinity School Address" in 1838 and who went on to produce a piece titled Discourse on the Latest Form of Infidelity in 1839. (The "latest form of infidelity" to which Norton referred was, of course, Transcendentalism.)
Emerson was, as a high-profile writer, lecturer, and editor of the Transcendental periodical The Dial, central among the Transcendentalists. In addition to Emerson and Thoreau, others involved in the movement included: Amos Bronson Alcott (philosopher, educator, and Concordian); Margaret Fuller (early feminist, author, and lecturer; one of the editors of The Dial); James Freeman Clarke (Unitarian minister, author, and editor); Theodore Parker (Unitarian minister and abolitionist); Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (teacher and educational reformer, writer, editor, and social reformer; one of the publishers of The Dial); George Ripley (Unitarian minister, editor, and founder of the Brook Farm community); Orestes Brownson (editor, reviewer, and contributor of essays to The Christian Examiner and to his own Boston Quarterly Review); William Henry Channing (Unitarian minister and editor of the Western Messenger and other journals); Christopher Pearse Cranch (Unitarian minister, editor of the Western Messenger, poet, and artist); Convers Francis (Unitarian minister, biographer of John Eliot, and historian of Watertown); William Henry Furness (Unitarian minister, theologian, and author); Frederic Henry Hedge (Unitarian minister, scholar, author, editor, lecturer, and professor of ecclesiastical history and of German at Harvard); and Jones Very (poet, tutor in Greek at Harvard, and, after he proclaimed himself the second coming of Christ, a resident at McLean's Asylum). These individuals, all of whom devoted serious thought to the major concepts of Transcendentalism, were educated, intellectual people.
