Transcendental Club first meets.

Originally Hedge’s Club, it meets initially at the home of George Ripley at 3 Bedford Place. Proposed by Frederick Hedge as a study group for young Unitarian ministers, members include Bronson Alcott, Orestes Brownson, William Ellery Channing, James Freeman Clarke, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Channing subsequently describes Transcendentalism “On the somewhat stunted stock of Unitarianism . . . had been grafted German Idealism. . . and the result was a vague, yet exalting conception of the godlike nature of the human spirit.” The club goes on to meet in various Boston-area homes and extend its membership to women by inviting Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody to join. Its last meeting occurs at 13 – 15 West Street on September 9, 1840.