The Ralph Waldo Emerson House

10/22/2026

On October 22, 1837, Henry David Thoreau began his first journal. The opening lines of Thoreau's entry record his meeting with Ralph Waldo Emerson in his study at the Emerson's home :

" 'What are you doing now?' he asked. 'Do you keep a journal?' So I make my first entry to-day."

Both men would keep their journals through the remainder of their lives, documenting their activities, thoughts, and relationships, and forming the foundations for their individual literary productions.

Image: Emerson's Study, 1888. Photograph by Benjamin F. Mills. Wikimedia Commons, courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photograph Division.

10/20/2026

On October 20, 1839, Margaret Fuller accepted the first editorship of the Transcendentalist Club’s new literary journal, “The Dial.” Fuller and Emerson collaborated through letters and Fuller’s visits to the Emerson home.
Emerson hoped that the publication’s contents and interest would go beyond the strictly literary to encompass the broad cultural interests of their generation to address “the Art of Living.” The periodical was popular, but never achieved financial success.

Fuller resigned her editorship in 1842 to pursue other opportunities, joining Horace Greely’s Tribune staff as a literary critic, columnist, and editor, and becoming the first female foreign correspondent. Ralph Waldo Emerson assumed editorship for The Dial’s final two years.

Images:
Margaret Fuller, 1870 copy of 1846 daguerreotype, Wikimedia Commons, courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery.
Title page of the first issue of The Dial (1840), Wikimedia Commons.

10/19/2026

On October 19, 1844, Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Essays: Second Series" was published. The book included a new essay entitled "Nature," (not to be confused with its more famous predecessor published in 1836). Emerson began the essay, appropriately enough, with a long passage proclaiming the promises of October in New England.

In this except from that passage, Emerson relates his enjoyment in the season and how walking in nature immerses him the present moment:

"There are days which occur in this climate, at almost any season of the year, wherein the world reaches its perfection, when the air, the heavenly bodies, and the earth, make a harmony, as if nature would indulge her offspring ... How easily we might walk onward into the opening landscape, absorbed by new pictures, and by thoughts fast succeeding each other, until by degrees the recollection of home was crowded out of the mind, all memory obliterated by the tyranny of the present, and we were led in triumph by nature."

We invite you to come experience the season joys both the Emerson home and the landscape. There is still two more week in our 2026 touring season, and the grounds and the Emerson-Thoreau Amble, which passes behind the Emerson House, offers wonderful opportunities to enjoy the "triumphs" of nature year round!

10/16/2026

We're in the final weeks of our 2026 season, but there is still time to tour the Emerson House! The house is open for guided tours on Thursdays-Sundays, through Saturday, October 31st.

10/10/2026

Join us at the Emerson House on October 18th for our final special program of the season: The Emersons at Home

Join us at the Emerson House on October 18th for our final special program of the season. You may know Ralph Waldo Emerson as the venerable Sage of Concord, but he was also a husband, father, and friend. In this unique guided tour, we’ll share affectionate and personal stories from the Emerson hou...

10/05/2026

This afternoon, as part of the continuing Public Research Talk series, the Transcendentalism Initiative, hosted by the Center for World Religions at Harvard Divinity School, Scott Pratt will present "Choosing Good or Evil—Royce and Emerson on Knowing the Difference" This talk will consider whether Ralph Waldo Emerson's work offers ways to discern between evil and good through aesthetics.

You can attend this talk in-person or virtually on zoom.

Calendar News & Events News & Eventsexpand_more Calendar Upcoming Conferences Past Conferences News Past Events The CSWR sponsors a variety of formal and informal academic programs designed to engage scholars and students of religious studies in what is becoming an increasingly globalized field, inc...

10/03/2026

Emerson's Aunt Mary Moody Emerson had a tremendous influence on him. She encouraged young Waldo to enjoy nature and to keep a daily journal, as she did. Her nephew would borrow largely from her journals when writing his essays and lectures. Aunt Mary instructed him to, "do what you are afraid to do,"—a quotation that he is now well known for.

Mary Moody Emerson chose to remain single, preferring an independent spiritual and intellectual life. She was a strong minded and opinionated women. She was also eccentric. According to her nephew, she made her bed as a coffin and wore out many shrouds in preparation for her ever-anticipated death. He remarked, "And when at last her release arrived," on October 3, 1863, "the event of her death had really such a comic tinge in the eyes of every one who knew her, that her friends feared they might, at her funeral, not dare to look at each other, lest they should forget the serious proprieties of the hour."

Despite his levity, Emerson greatly admired his aunt and he called her "my heroine." The epitaph on her headstone is his tribute to her: "She gave high counsels. It was the privilege of certain boys to have this immeasurably high standard indicated to their childhood; a blessing which nothing else in education could supply."

To her disappointment, Mary Moody Emerson lived to be 89 years old, her life spanning the American Revolution to the American Civil War. Rest in peace, Aunt Mary!

📷: Kristi Martin

10/01/2026

Our heartfelt gratitude to Michael Jonik, and all who were in attendance at last evening’s program, “Timeless Emerson.”

Jonik, Professor of American Literature and Philosophy at the University of Sussex, presented an overview of “The New Cambridge Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson” (Cambridge University Press, 2026), which he edited. His talk highlighted new collective scholarship speaking to Emerson’s relevance to our times. Covering the full scope of Emerson’s career as a lecturer, an essayist, philosopher, and a poet, Jonik argued that Emerson’s work is always timely and fresh in his ever-progressing resistance to social conventions, and his ever-present challenge to us in asking, ‘how shall I live?’ The talk was followed by a thought-provoking conversation by the group, which included Emerson family descendants.

As we sat in a circle around Emerson’s writing table, the study was enlivened in the spirit of Emerson and the thinkers who gathered here with him to exchange ideas and discuss the great questions of their life and times. It was truly a special evening.

Image: Michael Jonik speaking in Ralph Waldo Emerson's Study at the Emerson House on September 30, 2026.

09/30/2026

197 years ago today, Ralph Waldo Emerson married his first wife, Ellen Louisa Tucker, on September 30, 1829.

Five days before the wedding, seventeen-year-old Ellen wrote the last letter she would compose to Waldo before their marriage, "I tell you Waldo Emerson you must not leave off writing me when we live together - I love such long lived lines of affection ... but all I love dearly will be with me ... I love you Waldo most dearly..."

Ellen suffered from tuberculosis and died in February 1831. She never lived in the Emerson House in Concord.

Emerson remarried in September 1835. His second wife (Lydia) Lidian, who survived him, was the mother of his four children. She named their eldest daughter in tribute to her husband's first wife, Ellen Tucker Emerson.

Quotation from: One First Love: Letters of Ellen Louisa Tucker to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ed. Gregg, (Harvard University Press, 1962), 105-106.
Linked Image: Portrait of Ellen Louisa Tucker Emerson by Sarah Goodridge (c. 1830) in the collections of our neighbors at the Concord Museum (Object PI806).

09/29/2026

Dear Friends and Followers: Please DO NOT purchase tickets to our event tomorrow night from anyone online claiming to have extra tickets. These are not legitimate offers. Admission to this event is FREE, with registration made exclusively through us and the reservations are full. No one has tickets.

We'll try to keep on top of removing the SPAM comments attempting to take advantage of our visitors, but they have been numerous so far this morning. Thank you for your understanding.