Mr. Emerson Speaks
Portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Starting in 1833, Ralph Waldo Emerson earned his living by lecturing across the country, and eventually in Europe as well. He was able to leverage a rising enthusiasm for the lyceum movement, which began in England and made its way to America. Lyceums offered speakers a platform to provide education, discussion, and entertainment to audiences hungry to hear about a broad range of topics, including history, science, nature, and agriculture.
Emerson began his career as a Unitarian minister. By 1833, he had taken his considerable skills in speaking from the pulpit to join the lyceum movement and deliver lectures. His reputation as an author and lecturer grew thanks to the publication of his first essay, “Nature,” in 1836. Acknowledging that he would be supporting his growing family through speaking, Emerson made the decision that year to manage his own engagements, rather than relying on the Lyceum Association. It was a decision he never regretted. As an example, when speaking at the Masonic Temple in Boston, attendance at one Emerson event was 439 people. Ticket sales amounted to $796 and after expenses he cleared $571—the equivalent of over $15,000 today.
Crafting his lectures between the spring and fall seasons, Emerson would go on the road to lecture in the winter. In many ways, this represented early “social media” because he was connecting in person with audiences who might then purchase and read his poetry and essays. Emerson started by giving lectures at the Concord Lyceum and quickly expanded to all of New England, south to Washington, D.C., across the Midwest, and north into Canada. In 1847 he traveled to Europe for a British lecture tour, returning home in July 1848. As an example of how rigorous a schedule Emerson kept, between January and March of 1846 he gave 37 lectures, mostly at different locations.
While many other people of various disciplines were also on the lecture circuit, Emerson had a vital advantage: he was able to connect with his audience. He made people “feel taller.” One laborer in Boston who attended all his lectures was asked if she understood what he was conveying. Her response was, “Not a word, but I love to see him standing up there thinking everyone else is just as good as he is.”
Elizabeth Palmer Peabody—a transcendentalist, publisher, and founder of the first kindergarten in America—wrote of him, “Mr. Emerson was always preeminently the preacher to his own generation and future ones, but as much—if not more—out of the pulpit as in it; faithful unto the end of his early chosen profession and the vows of his youth.”
— B. Ewen, Emerson House guide
