The Transcendental Generation

The Transcendental Generation was born into the early national period and came of age amid the aftermath of the War of 1812, the Era of Good Feelings, religious revival, romantic reform, and the first sharp outlines of sectional politics. They are associated with moral intensity, abolitionism, religious and philosophical experiment, and utopian reform. The label is apt in a literary sense too, since the cohort includes the world of Emerson, Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller.