American Philosophy

Henry David Thoreau Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts, on 12 July 1817 and died in the same town on 6 May 1862, of tuberculosis. Baptized David Henry, he began using the reversed order of his name after graduating. He studied at Harvard (1837), taught for a time, and worked with his father in pencil-making and as a surveyor while writing. He was a close friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who supported him and in whose Concord circle he was formed. His Journal, kept for decades, is an essential part of his work. ...

Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on 25 May 1803 and died in Concord, Massachusetts, on 27 April 1882. He studied at Harvard, graduating in 1821, and became a Unitarian minister at the Second Church of Boston. In 1832 he resigned the post over his disagreement with the practice of the Lord’s Supper, and from then on lived as a lecturer and writer, settling in Concord. He became the best-known figure of Transcendentalism, the New England intellectual movement gathered around the Transcendental Club (1836) and the journal The Dial, which included Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau and Bronson Alcott. ...