Sylvester Judd, 1813–1853

Sylvester Judd was a member of the Transcendental Club and perhaps the only Transcendental novelist.  His major work is Margaret (1845), which describes the life of a girl who is raised in the backwoods in a foster family of hard-drinking infidels.  The novel is notable for the case it makes against Calvinism and for its accurate rendition of the common language of common people.  Judd’s other works are Richard Edney and the Governor’s Family (1850) and Philo: An Evangeliad (1850).  In 1840 he was ordained at the Unitarian church in Augusta, Maine, and he served there until his death in 1853.