Watertown Lyceum correspondence collection, 1843-1883.
(Manuscript)

George William Curtis was an author and orator who championed, among other causes, civil-service reform and the vote for women. In early years he spent some time at Brook Farm with the Transcendentalists, in West Roxbury, Mass., and later he served as an editor of Harper's Magazine.

Horace Greeley was the founder and editor of the New York Tribune, which was the most influential newspaper in the United States from the 1840s to the 1870s. His New York Herald was known for energetic reporting, moral standards, and intellectual appeal; its correspondents included Mark Twain, Bayard Taylor, Karl Marx, and Margaret Fuller, the first woman journalist on the staff of a major paper. He was also one of the founders of the Liberal Republican Party, a reformer, a politician, and an outspoken opponent of slavery. Supported Free Soil movement; encouraged antislavery sentiment. He was a candidate for U.S. president, 1872. He was a national figure, an innovative journalist, and influenced ideas throughout the United States.

William Lloyd Garrison was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, in 1805. He began work for the Newburyport Herald as a writer and editor in 1818. When he was 25, Garrison joined the Abolition movement. He published his own anti-slavery newspaper, The Liberator, between 1831 and 1865. In 1832 he helped organize the New England Anti-Slavery Society and, the following year, the American Anti-Slavery Society. He supported women's suffrage movement , free trade and a single tax. He died in New York City on May 24, 1879.

John Greenleaf Whittier was a New England Quaker poet, born in Amesbury, Massachusetts. His early poems reflect his involvement in anti-slavery politics. He was a pioneer in regional literature as well as a crusader for many humanitarian causes. His first poems were published (1826) in the Newburyport Free Press, edited by William Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist, who became his lifelong friend. In the years from 1828 to 1832, Whittier edited and contributed stories, sketches, and poems to various newspapers. His first two published books, Legends of New England (1831) and the poem Moll Pitcher (1832), warmly portrayed everyday life in his rural region. Abolitionist and Poet Whittier is depicted so often as the gentle hoary-headed Quaker that the fiery politician within him is often forgotten. He declared himself an abolitionist in the pamphlet Justice and Expediency (1833) and went to the unpopular national antislavery convention. In 1834-35 he sat in the Massachusetts legislature He served in the state legislature, edited The Pennsylvania freeman (1838-1840), published verse in the 1850s, and during the 1860s contributed to The Atlantic monthly, which he had helped to found. He ran for Congress on the Liberty ticket in 1842 and was a founder of the Republican party. He also worked staunchly behind the political scene to further the abolitionist cause and was an active antislavery editor until 1840, when frail health forced him to retire to his Amesbury home. From there he sent out more of the poems and essays that made him a spokesman for the cause, and he was corresponding editor (1847-59) of the Washington Abolitionist weekly, the National Era. In addition, Whittier compiled and edited a number of books; the most entertaining was the semi-fictional Leaves from Margaret Smith's Journal (1849). Meanwhile, his volumes of verse came out almost biennially. The first authorized collection appeared in 1838. After the Civil War he turned from politics and dedicated himself completely to poetry. Although he liked to think of himself as the bard of common people, as On Songs of Labor (1850), his best work is his careful and accurate delineation of New England life, history, and legend. His most famous poem is Snow-bound (1866), an idyllic picture of his boyhood home; other memorable volumes are The Tent on the Beach (1867) and Maud Muller (1867) and such ballads as "Barbara Frietchie", Marguerite", and "Skipper Ireson's Ride" and perennial favorites like "The Barefoot Boy" and the war poem "Laus Deo" and his nearly 100 hymns, of which the best known is "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind", gave him popularity in his time surpassed perhaps only by Longfellow. In current critical estimation, Whittier's ability as a balladist surpassed his ability as a poet. His meters and rhythms were conventional and his poems tended to be too profuse. Nevertheless, as the voice of the New England villager and farmer prior to industrialization, his work portrays an important period in American history. Whittier spent his later years, after 1876, in Danvers, Massachusetts, where he lived with female cousins.

Ralph Waldo Emerson is the quintessentially American literary figure of the 19th century, providing the conceptual bridge from a Puritan past to a genuine literary tradition. Essayist, lecturer, philosopher, poet, and organizer of the Transcendentalist movement, Emerson's work and thought continue to serve as a touchstone for American art and philosophy. American philosopher, essayist, poet, lecturer, Transcendentalist; resident of Concord, Mass. Born in Boston, 5/25/1803; died in Concord, 4/27/1882. Father: William Emerson, pastor of First Church, Boston (d. 1811). Education influenced by aunt Mary Moody Emerson. Entered Harvard 1817; teachers included George Ticknor, Edward Everett, Edward Tyrrel Channing; graduated 1821. At Harvard, began to keep journals that later served as source material for lectures. Taught school before entering Harvard Divinity School./ (Cont.) Approved as candidate for Unitarian ministry 1826. In 1829, he married Ellen Louisa Tucker, who died 1831. Became colleague of Rev. Henry Ware at Second Church in Boston 1829 and resigned 1832. He toured Europe 1832-1833 where he met Carlyle, Wordsworth, Coleridge. On return to Boston, he turned to lecturing as source of income. His Transcendentalism, expressed in 1st book Nature (1836), was shaped by reading German authors, Wordsworth, Plato, Neoplatonists, Eastern writings, Montaigne, & Swedenborg. In 1834, he settled in Concord, home of his ancestors Peter Bulkeley (founder & first minister of town) and William Emerson. He married Lydia Jackson of Plymouth 1835. He was a friend of Thoreau, Alcott, Margaret Fuller, and others among Transcendentalists. His "American Scholar" speech published 1837, and "Divinity School Address" in 1838. Dial was started 1840 with Emerson as major contributor, later editor. First series of Essays published 1842, second 1844, and poems 1847. He again journeyed to England & France 1847-1848. Spoke out against slavery during 1850's. He was one of founders of Saturday Club, 1855. He travelled to California, where he met John Muir in 1871. His Concord home burned 1872. He went abroad, returning to Concord to find home rebuilt through largesse of friends. Final decade marked by progressive mental decline.

Thomas Starr King: Unitarian and Universalist minister and popular lyceum lecturer. Born in Mass. and serving churches there, he moved from Boston in 1860 to San Francisco, where he became an opponent of secession and an active fund-raiser for the United States Sanitary Commission. With the start of the Civil War, he campaigned successfully throughout the state to keep California in the Union, and raised over one million dollars for the U.S. Sanitary Commission. He was credited by Lincoln with preventing California from becoming a separate republic, and organized the Pacific branch of the United States Sanitary Commission. His is one of two statues from the State of California in the Capital Building, Washington, D.C.

John Gorham Palfrey (1796-1881), was a Unitarian minister, professor at Harvard Divinity School, editor of the North American Review, congressman from Massachusetts (1847-1849), postmaster of Boston (1861-1867), and historian, best known for his multi-volume History of New England. Still later he became a lecturer and then a historian of New England, which included spending much research in England and Scotland. Through the influence of friends in Washington, he served as the postmaster of Boston, while doing much of the writing of this history. He married Mary Ann Hammond (1800-1898). William Taylor Palfrey was his brother.