George Ripley (October 3, 1802 - July 4, 1880) was an American social reformer, Unitarian minister, and journalist associated with Transcendentalism. He was pushed to attend Harvard College by his father and completed his studies in 1823. He went on graduate from the Harvard Divinity School. Ripley was ordained, became the minister of the Purchase Street Church in Boston, Massachusetts, but began to question traditional Unitarian beliefs. He became one of the founding members of the Transcendental Club. He resigned from the church and founded an experimental commune, Brook Farm. The community later converted to a model based on the work of Charles Fourier, but the community was never financially stable in either format. After Brook Farm's failure, he was hired by Horace Greeley at the NY Tribune. He also published the New American Cyclopaedia, which made him financially successful. He built a national reputation as an arbiter of taste and literature before his death in 1880 at the age of 77.