Emerson and The Atlantic Monthly
Cover of the first issue of The Atlantic Monthly, published in November 1857.
Ralph Waldo Emerson—who was always open to creating platforms to generate and share new ideas—met with like-minded men in April 1857, the result of which was the creation of The Atlantic Monthly magazine. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and several others joined Emerson as co-founders and in November of 1857 the first issue was published. The magazine—now known as The Atlantic—is still published and enjoyed 164 years later.
One can imagine these great minds sitting at Boston's Parker House Hotel exchanging ideas for the creative side of the magazine as well as the practical side. Moses Dresser Phillips—the publisher who arranged that first meeting—wrote of it, “The time occupied was longer by about four hours and thirty minutes than I am in the habit of consuming in that kind of occupation, but it was the richest time intellectually by all odds that I have ever had.”
The timing was fortuitous to take on crucial issues of the day, including the abolition of slavery. The Atlantic Monthly’s mission statement was signed by Emerson, Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and many others. The goal was to publish literature from American and foreign writers, and to rank itself politically with “the body of men which is in favor of Freedom, National Progress, and Honor, whether public or private.”
The first issues featured Walt Whitman’s poetry, Thoreau’s essays, short stories from Louisa May Alcott, and contributions by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry James. While the Table of Contents in early issues list the titles of the pieces within, the names of the authors are excluded. Emerson wrote, “The names of contributors will be given out when the names are worth more than the articles.”
In 2004, the name of the publication was changed from The Atlantic Monthly to The Atlantic. In the December 2021 issue, Mark Greif reviewed The Transcendentalists and Their World. Written by Concord historian and writer Robert A. Gross, the book explores the 19th-century relationships between Concord’s elite writers—including Ralph Waldo Emerson—their shared philosophies, and the impact on America’s literary culture.
— B. Ewen, Emerson House guide
