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A RARE COMPLETE SET OF THE DIAL WITH TRANSCENDENTALIST PROVENANCE


74. THE DIAL: A Magazine for Literature, Philosophy, and Religion. [Edited by Margaret Fuller and Ralph Waldo Emerson]. Boston and London: [I] Cambridge Press, Metcalf, Torry, and Ballou for Weeks, Jordan, and Company and Wiley and Putnam; [II] Cambridge Press, Torry, and Ballou for E.P. Peabody and John Green; [III] Thurston and Torry for E.P. Peabody and John Green; [IV] James Munroe and Co. and John Chapman, July 1840-April 1844.


£7,500


8vo in 4s (207-211 x 128-131mm), 16 parts (the complete series) in 4 volumes. I: contemporary American diced half roan over marbled boards, red- speckled edges [?for James Burrill Curtis, vide infra]; II-IV: contemporary American grained half roan over black cloth [?for Sarah Blake Shaw, vide infra], black-speckled edges; pp. I: [i]-vi (vol. I title, imprint on verso, contents), 544; II: [i]-vi (vol. I title, imprint on verso, contents), 544; III: [i]-iv (vol. I title, imprint on verso, contents), 548; IV: pp. [i]-iv (vol. I title, verso blank, contents), 540; errata slip bound in before vol. II, pt iv, letterpress facsimile of ‘Quarter Card of Discipline and Studies in Mr. Alcott’s School for the Winter Term Current 1837’ on III, p. 453; bindings worn causing small losses, I-III lacking spines, I-II crudely rebacked, most joints split, some variable browning and spotting, occasional marking, lacking bifolium II, 35, 2.3, some damp-marking in vol. IV, otherwise a very good set of this rare and important journal; provenance: James Burrill Curtis (1822-1898, pencilled ownership inscription on title of vol. I) — Sarah Blake Sturgis Shaw (1815-1902, pencilled signatures ‘Sarah B. Shaw’ dated 1841, 1842, 1845, 1844 [sic] on the first page of vol. II, pt ii and the titles of vols II, III, and IV, respectively; manuscript annotations in vols II-IV) — error on II, p. 421 corrected in ink by an early hand (as per errata slip) — error on III, p. 213 corrected by an early hand in pencil (as per erratum on p. 416) — [?Goodspeed’s Book Shop, Boston, MA (early 20th-century pencilled bookseller’s note ‘4 vols [...] 75.00’ on upper pastedown of vol. I; purchased by:)] — Percy Whiting Brown (loosely-inserted early-20th-century print of Goodspeed’s with Percy Whiting Brown’s address in pencil on the verso and Brown’s statement in Middlesex Monographs (1941) that he owned ‘a complete bound set on my shelves, which I purchased at Goodspeed’s’, p. 27).


First editions. Perhaps the most famous and influential literary journal of nineteenth-century America — despite its short lifespan of four years and very small number of subscribers (only three hundred at its height) — the four volumes of The Dial (each composed of four parts) were issued between July 1840 and April 1844. As G.W. Cooke comments, The Dialwas important because it was ‘the first really independent and original journal published in this country. Excellent monthlies and quarterlies had been published previously, but they were imitative of European ideas and methods, and they had no fresh literary merit. In a large degree such periodicals as “The North American Review” and “The Christian Examiner,” [...] were academic in taste, pedantic in method, and wanting in literary insight. “The Dial” did not wholly escape these limitations, but it took a new course, and one that was not only original, but initiative of better things in the future. It was its novelty, its freshness of tone, its romantic temper, its boundless hope and courage, that caused it to be criticised and jeered at generally by the more conservative literary journals. It was not conformatory enough to the old methods to secure it a general recognition on the part of the public; and it was condemned because it was not understood or appreciated’ (An Historical and Biographical Introduction to Accompany the Dial (Cleveland, OH: 1902), I, p. 56).


The original editor of The Dial was the author, editor and journalist Sarah Margaret Fuller (1810-1850), who had been a member of Massachusetts intellectual circles from an early age, and was assisted by her friend, the literary critic, editor and author George Ripley (1802-1880). Ripley had graduated from Harvard in 1823 and then attended Harvard Divinity School, leaving in 1826, to embark upon a career as a minister, in tandem with a growing literary career, as an author, magazine editor and contributor, and co-editor of the series Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature, which brought translations of French and German theologians and philosophers to an American audience and was thus an important influence upon the Transcendentalists (Fuller herself contributed a translation of Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe to the series). On 10 September 1836, the first meeting of the Transcendentalist Club had been held at Ripley’s home, ‘and during the four years the group, [Ralph Waldo] Emerson, Ripley, Hedge, Clarke, A.B. Alcott, O.A. Brownson, and after 1837 Theodore Parker, Margaret Fuller, and Elizabeth Peabody, had planned various projects to bring into practice the theories they were discussing. The founding of a magazine, the Dial, in 1840 was the first definite act of the club, which was never an organized club in the accepted sense of the term. Ripley aided Miss Fuller in editing this quarterly, contributed two articles [...] beside numerous unsigned and still unassigned reviews, and then relinquished this editorial activity for the more arduous task of organizing the Brook-Farm colony [at West Roxbury, Massachusetts]’ (DAB). During Margaret Fuller’s tenure as editor she raised the number of subscribers from one hundred to three hundred, but in 1842 (possibly partly due to Ripley’s withdrawal into other fields), she resigned the editorship, and Emerson took over the journal from her, continuing to edit it until the appearance of the final number, often with the assistance of Thoreau (indeed, Thoreau undertook virtually all the editorial work on the issue for April 1843 as Emerson was in New York on a lecture tour).


This set is particularly interesting for its provenance, which connects it directly to Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, George Ripley, and Brook Farm, and also to the wider literary circle associated with The Dial and the Transcendentalists. The first volume bears the pencilled ownership signature of Burrill Curtis, the older brother of the writer George William Curtis (1824-1892), who contributed ‘A Song of Death’ to the July 1843 issue of The Dial (see volume IV, p. 87). The two boys lost their mother in 1826, when they were both very young, ‘and it was [George’s] elder brother James who thereafter exerted for many years the strongest influence on his life. As boys they spent five years together at a school in Massachusetts, and then returned to Providence where their father had re-married’ (DAB). In 1836 Burrill entered Brown University, but never graduated (possibly because the family moved to New York City in 1839), and then in May 1842 both Burrill and George decided to join the Brook Farm community


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