Unrecorded Photograph of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Rare Photo of the Week

A hitherto unknown photograph of the 19th century essayist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson has been acquired by William Munroe Special Collections at the Concord Free Public Library in Massachusetts. 

It is believed to be the second or third earliest known photograph of America’s most famous Transcendentalist.


The image, a carte-de-visite photograph taken from an original daguerreotype circa 1848, was acquired by Massachusetts collector Victor Gulotta. It was among hundreds of photographs buried in a collection for more than half a century.  Upon acquiring several images from the collection, Gulotta observed that the one of Emerson was exceptionally early and unfamiliar to him. 

“With the help of the experts at Concord Free Public Library, we were able to determine that it was a rare and not previously known image of Emerson, originally produced in Liverpool in the 1840s when Emerson was visiting England,” he said. The Library reached an agreement to acquire the photo from Gulotta.

“We are delighted to acquire this previously unrecorded image of Emerson," said CFPL’s William Munroe Special Collections curator Anke Voss. "Thanks to my predecessor curator Leslie Perrin Wilson and the late Joel Myerson's comprehensive Emerson iconography it was possible to confirm it among only very few known images of Emerson from the 1840s. The image is particularly striking as it shows Emerson reading in a relaxed pose and smiling. The photograph would have been taken on the same trip to England that produced the painting of Emerson by David Scott in our collection, which shows Emerson in his more familiar pose at the lectern."