Transcendentalism in New England: A History

by Octavius Brooks Frothingham

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

Genres: Philosophy, History

416 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

Octavius Brooks Frothingham (1822–1895), was an American clergyman and author.

Reviews

[Roger · Rating 4 out of 5]

The edition I read is the 1972 University of Pennsylvania edition, with an introduction by Sydney E. Ahlstrom, with a total of 386 pages, which I could not locate in the list of editions on Goodreads.

I've been a fan and devotee of Transcendentalism since reading Thoreau in high school. This book, which I had not previously read, added to both my appreciation and knowledge. It's important, as you read this history, to keep in mind that Frothingham left and ultimately rejected Transcendentalism, and his assessments (especially of particular writers and their works) are biased. At times, his predictions about the value and utility of writers in the future is actually entertainingly funny. As Prof. Ahlstrom notes in the introduction, this is a critical (in both the academic and colloquial sense) history. Frothingham is appreciative and charitable towards transcendentalism, but only insofar as he is a former transcendentalist who appreciates it as a stage in his own thought which he has since outgrown. Ahlstrom suggests that source material that was unavailable to Frothingham makes his account incomplete, while adding "Frothingham's attitude toward the early Unitarians may now seem unduly condescending, his critique of Transcendental philosophy somewhat presumptuous, and his slighting of Thoreau ill-considered."

The slighting of Thoreau comes in his lack of mentioning him except as the subject of a biography written by another writer. In his catalog of Transcendentalist writers and luminaries, Thoreau himself goes unmentioned. I'd like to say that I handle this with academic indifference, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't prejudice me a tad toward Frothingham.

All in all, this is worth your time if you're interested in Transcendentalism and its major characters. It's not a full-on exposition of Transcendentalist thought but, as the author takes pains to point out, is a history that is valuable as history.

[Jeffrey Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

A personal history written by one who was there then. The languages is a bit pietistic but Frothingham did not consider himself a true and certain Transcendentalist but then, perhaps no true transcendentalist did.

[Erika · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read in Bordeaux while preparing my thesis