George Ripley (3 October 1802-4 July 1880), who first gained national prominence as a Transcendentalist and the founder of the Brook Farm community, had a secondary but significant journalistic career and his greatest fame during the last quarter century of his life. As the dean of literate journalism, known across the country for his book reviews, articles, and essays in Horace Greeley's New York Tribune, Ripley became both the arbiter of taste for many educated Americans and an oracle of culture for a mass audience. Over the years between the 1850s and Ripley's death, millions of readers followed his ideas and opinions in the Tribune, in leading periodicals such as Putnam's Magazine and Harper's New Monthly Magazine, and in the most important reference work of the Civil War era, The New American Cyclopedia (16 vols., 1858-1863), coedited with Charles A. Dana.

The most significant work in Ripley's life, however, can be...