Christopher Pearse Cranch (March 8, 1813 – January 20, 1892) was an American writer and artist often associated with Transcendentalism and the Hudson River School.

[1] His conservative father, William Cranch, was Chief Judge of the United States Circuit Court of the District of Columbia.

[4] Later, he pursued various occupations: a magazine editor, caricaturist, children's fantasy writer (the Huggermugger books), poet (The Bird and the Bell with Other Poems in 1875), translator, and landscape painter.

[5] Though not one of its founding members, Cranch became associated with the Transcendental Club;[6] he read Ralph Waldo Emerson's Nature by December 1836 and beginning in June 1837 served as a substitute editor of the Western Messenger in the absence of James Freeman Clarke.

[10] Cranch left the ministry to focus on a career in the arts and spent about 20 years in Italy and France studying and practicing painting.

[11] Cranch spent the last couple decades of his life in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and contributed to publications like Harper's, The Atlantic, Putnam's, and Lippincott's as well as publishing three books of poetry.