Orestes Augustus Brownson

Born in Vermont in 1803, Brownson was largely self-educated and built his career through reading, preaching, editing, and public debate. Over the years he was connected with several religious traditions, including Presbyterian, Universalist, and Unitarian circles, and he also took part in the reform movements and labor questions of his time.

He became known as an essayist and public intellectual with a strong voice in American religious and social thought. Brownson associated for a time with the New England Transcendentalists, but he is especially remembered for his 1844 conversion to Roman Catholicism and for the influence of Brownson's Quarterly Review, where he wrote on theology, philosophy, politics, and culture.

Brownson died in Detroit in 1876. Today he is remembered as a passionate, sometimes combative writer whose changing convictions reflected the energy and uncertainty of 19th-century American intellectual life.