Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States.
Born on May 25, 1803 in Boston, Massachusetts, a son of Ruth Haskins and the Rev. William Emerson, a Unitarian minister, he graduated from Boston Latin School. In 1817, at age 14, he attended Harvard College, where he was appointed freshman messenger for the president. After graduation, Emerson established his own school in Chelmsford, and later taught in Cambridge, Massachusetts until early 1825. He was accepted into the Harvard Divinity School in late 1824, and, following his marriage to Ellen Louisa Tucker and move back to Boston, was ordained in January 1829 and served as junior pastor at Boston’s Second Church.
However, the death of his first wife in 1931 tested his faith and he resigned, emerging as the leader of the Transcendental movement. This philosophy became the basis of his writings and for the next 40 years, he published his thoughts and philosophy in the forms of essays, journals and poems and sayings.
In 1840, he started and later edited “The Dial,” a Transcendental journal, and as a lecturer and orator became the leading voice of intellectual culture in the United States. A collection of his essays and lectures was published in 1841, Essays: First Series—which included his most famous essay, “Self Reliance” (1841)—and in 1844 he published his second collection, Essays: Second Series.
He died on April 27, 1882 in Concord, Massachusetts, aged 78.
Emerson remains among the linchpins of the American romantic movement, and his work has greatly influenced the thinkers, writers and poets that followed him.
