In his inaugural address to readers in the first issue of The Dial: A Magazine for Literature, Philosophy, and Religion, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) alludes to a revolution whose members share "no external organization, no badge, no creed, no name [and] . . . do not vote, or print, or even meet together [or] . . . know each other's faces or names" (1.1.2). These comments are perhaps rhetorically disingenuous when one recalls that Emerson knew the faces and names of many of the revolutionaries, and the The Dial was itself the outgrowth of an "external organization" that made this revolution a reality for many New Englanders—the Transcendental Club. The Dial was supposed to be the voice of this loose cadre of liberal Unitarian ministers, intellectuals, writers, and social radicals who met sporadically from 1836 to 1840, but by the time the first issue was released in the summer of 1840, the group had already...