Well-versed in classic poetry and philosophy—a literature rich with heroic, mythic, and sacred figures—Emerson also admired Renaissance art, particularly works by Michelangelo and Raphael inspired by the vast iconography of the ancient world. Among the images of heroes, angels, and gods at the Emerson House are prints of five famous portraits of sibyls by Italian painters. 

A profile of U.S. Senator Charles Sumner, a noted abolitionist whose friendship with Ralph Waldo Emerson strengthened around their mutual antipathy for the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Through Sumner, Emerson met President Lincoln in 1862, and when Sumner died in 1874, Emerson was one of his pallbearers. A portrait of Sumner hangs on the second floor of the Emerson House.

Welcoming visitors back to the Emerson House for the 2022 season with a look back at the museum’s 92-year history and some memorable Emersonian events over the years.

On Christmas Day of 1832, Emerson sailed for Europe for the first time. He’d recently resigned as pastor of the Second Church in Boston and was still mourning the loss of his first wife, Ellen. In Europe, he hoped to find relief from an illness and to meet with writers he viewed as kindred spirits. He spent several months in Italy, was profoundly affected by the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, and met the writers Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and Thomas Carlyle, the last of whom became a lifelong friend.

Ralph Waldo Emerson gave more than a thousand lectures over 40 years, sharing his thoughts with audiences in the hope that they might reflect and learn. As we start this new year, hopeful of positive changes, we share a selection of some of Emerson’s most notable quotations. 

As part of the Concord Museum’s 2021 Holiday House Tour, the Emerson barn was decorated to reflect a nineteenth century holiday dining space.

In the 19th century as it is today, December was a time of celebrations and gatherings. For Ralph Waldo Emerson, it was also a month when he experienced many life changes. 

In the spring of 1857, a group of like-minded men met at Boston’s Parker House Hotel brainstorming ideas for a new magazine. The co-founders of what would become The Atlantic Monthly included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and several others. The magazine—now known as The Atlantic—has been published continuously since its first issue in November 1857.

On July 15, 1838, Emerson delivered what became known as the “Divinity School Address” to the graduating class of Harvard Divinity School. Arguing that every person could have a relationship with the divine without the mediation of the church or clergy, Emerson’s speech sparked great controversy and he was not invited back to his alma mater for another 30 years.

On this Father’s Day, a look back at the father figures in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s life and his own role as a devoted father to the four children he shared with Lidian: Waldo, Ellen, Edith, and Edward.

A virtual peek at early-summer blooms in the garden of the Emerson House in Concord, Massachusetts.

In the spring of 1871, Ralph Waldo Emerson joined John Murray Forbes—his daughter Edith’s father-in-law—and family on a train trip to California. After Emerson gave a series of lectures in San Francisco, the party moved on to Yosemite Valley, where a young John Muir arranged to meet the man he so admired.