Ralph Waldo Emerson

Biography

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer and poet, the leading figure of the Transcendentalist movement. Born in Boston, the son of a minister, he studied at Harvard and became a Unitarian minister himself, but he left the pulpit in 1832 because of his doubts. After a journey to Europe, where he met Coleridge, Wordsworth and Carlyle, he settled in Concord, Massachusetts. His first book, Nature, published in 1836, holds that the divine can be found in nature and in each person’s own soul.

In essays such as Self-Reliance he urged his readers to trust themselves rather than tradition and society. For decades he toured the country as one of its most popular lecturers, and he spoke out against slavery. He encouraged younger writers, among them Henry David Thoreau, who built his cabin at Walden Pond on Emerson’s land. He died in Concord in 1882.