RIPLEY, GEORGE (1802-1880), American critic and man of
letters, was born at Greenfield, Massachusetts, on the 3rd of
October 1802. He graduated first in his class at Harvard in
1823. From 1826 to 1840 he was pastor of a Unitarian church
in Boston, subsequently retiring from the active ministry
altogether. It was during those years that there grew up in New
England that form of thought or philosophy known as
Transcendentalism. Ripley was prominent, if not the leader, in all
practical manifestations of the movement; and it was largely
by his earnestness and practical energy that certain of its more
tangible results were brought about. The first meeting of the
Transcendental Club was held at his house in September 1836. He was a founder and a chief supporter of the magazine, the Dial, which was the organ of the school from 1841 to 1844. Most
important of all, however, he was the originator of “The Brook
Farm Institute of Education and Agriculture.” Until the
abandonment of this experiment in 1847, Ripley was its leader, cheerfully taking upon himself all kinds of tasks, teaching mathematics and philosophy in the school, milking cows and attending to other bucolic duties, and after June 1845 editing the weekly Harbinger, an organ of “association,” which he continued to edit in New York from 1847 until it was discontinued in 1849. The failure of ../Brook Farm/ (q.v.) left Ripley poor and feeling keenly the defeat of his project; but the event forced him at last to devote himself to that career of literary labour in which the real success of his life was achieved. In 1849 he joined the staff of the New York Tribune, and in a short time became its literary editor. This position, which, through his steadiness, scholarly conservatism and freedom from caprice as a critic, soon became one of great influence, he held until his death in New York City on the 4th of July 1880.
During the greater part of the time of his connexion with the
Tribune, Ripley was also an adviser of a prominent publishing
house, an occasional contributor to the magazines, and a
coöperator in several literary undertakings. The chief of these
was the American Cyclopaedia, which as the New American
Cyclopaedia — so named to distinguish it from Francis Lieber's
Encyclopaedia Americana — was issued, under the editorship of
Ripley and Charles A. Dana, in 1857-63, a revised edition, with
the word “new” dropped from the title, being issued under the
same editorship in 1873-76. He also issued, in translation, a
series of Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature (14 vols., 1838-42). Ripley was twice married, first in 1827 to Miss Sophia Willard Dana (d. 1861), a daughter of Francis Dana and a conspicuous figure at Brook Farm; and second, in 1865, to a young German widow, Mrs Augusta Schlossberger, who survived him and subsequently married Alphonse Pinede.
(E. L. B.)