At the same time, many in England and America were exposed to German thought and literature through the writings of Coleridge and Carlyle. Coleridge's Aids to Reflection (first published in 1825) was edited in 1829 by James Marsh, who added a lengthy introduction elucidating German philosophy for American readers. Carlyle wrote a life of Schiller and translated from Goethe. Between 1838 and 1842, George Ripley edited and published, in fourteen volumes, a set titled Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature, which included translations from French and German writings. In 1840, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody opened a circulating library and bookstore on West Street in Boston to supply her comrades with foreign works.
Among the many foreign authors who influenced the Transcendentalists were the Germans Kant, Fichte, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Schelling, Goethe, and Novalis; the French Cousin and Constant; the English writers Coleridge, Carlyle, and Wordsworth; Plato and English Neoplatonic writers; Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg; and the Eastern writings of Confucius and sacred texts of the Vishnu Purana and the Bhagavadgita.
