Christopher Pearse Cranch was a Unitarian minister, poet, author, artist, and member of the Transcendental Club.  He graduated from Harvard Divinity School in 1835 and for a short time afterward served as assistant pastor to Frederic Henry Hedge.  He then moved to the Ohio Valley and from 1837 to 1839 edited the Western Messenger, one of the first Transcendentalist magazines, with James Freeman Clarke.  This magazine defended Ralph Waldo Emerson, Amos Bronson Alcott, Orestes Brownson, and liberal Unitarianism in general against the attacks of the religiously orthodox.  At this time Cranch drew a number of inspired and amusing caricatures of Emerson, based upon passages in Emerson's works, that became famous and today are highly prized.  Cranch published early poetry in the Dial and the Harbinger; he published some later poetry in his collection The Bird and the Bell with Other Poems (1875).  He was also a landscape painter of some acclaim.  After studying the masters in Europe, he returned to the United States and came to paint in the style of the Hudson River School.  Although his paintings have been criticized by some as indefinite, they have also been praised for serenity and a true relation to nature.

| Top | Selected Bibliography

Armitage, Shelly. "Christopher Pearse Cranch: The Wit as Poet." American Transcendental Quarterly (1.1 (Mar 1987): 33-47.

Carpenter, Hazen C. "Emerson and Christopher Pearse Cranch." New England Quarterly 37 (1964): 18-42.

Dedmond, Francis B. "Christopher Pearse Cranch's 'Journal. 1839'." Studies in the American Renaissance (1983): 129-149.

Dedmond, Francis B. "'A Pencil in the Grasp of Your Graphic Wit': An Illustrated Letter from C. P. Cranch to Theodore Parker." Studies in the American Renaissance (1981): 345-357.

Delano, Sterling F. "Christopher Pearse Cranch's 'Address Delivered before the Harvard Musical Association (28 August 1845)'." Resources for American Literary Study 17.2 (1991): 239-53.

Levenson, J. C. "Christopher Pearse Cranch: The Case History of a Minor Artist in America." American Literature 21.4 (Jan 1950): 415-26.

Lind, Sidney E. "Christopher Pearse Cranch's 'Gnosis': An Error in Title." Modern Language Notes 62.7 ( 1947 Nov; 62(7): 486-88.

Myerson, Joel. "Transcendentalism and Unitarianism in 1840: A New Letter by C.P. Cranch." College Language Association Journal 16 (1973): 366-68.

Norko, Julie M. "Christopher Pearse Cranch's Struggle with the Muses." Studies in the American Renaissance (1992): 209-27.

Robinson, David. "Christopher Pearse Cranche." The Transcendentalists: A Review of Research and Criticism. NY: Mod. Lang. Assn. of America, 1984. 123-30.

- - -. "The Career and Reputation of Christopher Pearse Cranch: An Essay in Biography and Bibliography." Studies in the American Renaissance (1978): 453-72.

- - -. "Christopher Pearse Cranch, Robert Browning, and the Problem of 'Transcendental' Friendship." Studies in the American Renaissance (1977): 145-53.

Williams, Paul O. "The Persistence of Cranch's 'Enosis'." ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 57 (1969): 41-46.

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Reuben, Paul P. "Chapter 4: Early Nineteenth Century: Christopher Pearse Cranch." PAL: Perspectives in American Literature- A Research and Reference Guide. WWW URL: http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap4/cranch.html (provide page date or date of your login).  

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