Essayist, philosopher, and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson
was born in Boston on May 25, 1803. Son and grandson of Protestant divines, Emerson attended Harvard College and Harvard Divinity School, entering the Unitarian ministry in 1829.
There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; . . . The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self Reliance,"
A popular, if unconventional preacher, young Emerson's sermons consisted of personal reflections on spirituality and virtue. He avoided expounding doctrine or engaging in scriptural exegesis. Increasingly dissatisfied with traditional protestant theology, Emerson resigned from the ministry in 1832. By the end of the decade, however, he was the leading exponent of transcendentalism, a philosophy that maintains the universality of creation, upholds the intrinsic goodness of man, and grounds truth in personal insight.
From the 1830s on, Emerson and a group of like-minded thinkers including Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau, and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody were based in Concord, Massachusetts. The transcendentalist community at Concord not only shared radical religious views, but also embraced forward-looking social reforms including abolition, temperance, and woman suffrage.
While living in the Old Manse (pictured below), Emerson completed his manifesto, Nature, and composed the poem "Concord Hymn" which commemorates the Revolutionary War battle. A prolific writer and thinker, his collected essays earned international acclaim, and, for decades, Emerson remained a popular lecturer.
By the time of his death in 1882, the eighty-year-old radical was heralded as the "Sage of Concord."
Use American Memory to learn more about the New England transcendentalists:
- Search the Today in History Archive for features on the reformers, philosophers, writers, and artists that formed Emerson's circle:
- Search the collection The Nineteenth Century in Print: Books on Emerson to find Ralph Waldo Emerson; an Estimate of His Character and Genius in Prose and Verse by Bronson Alcott (1882).
- Read a letter, from Emerson to Walt Whitman praising Whitman's poetry. The Emerson letter is one of several documents in Words and Deeds in American History highlighting important moments in American literary history.
- Emerson edited and wrote a moving biographical sketch for Henry David Thoreau's final work, Excursions. Published posthumously in 1863, Excursions is available through the collection The Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850-1920.
- In 1840, Emerson founded the transcendentalist literary magazine, The Dial, with Margaret Fuller and others. A writer, editor, and intellectual, Fuller published an introspective account of a trip to the Great Lakes region in 1843. Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 is available through the collection Pioneering the Upper Midwest.
- Take a virtual tour of turn-of-the-century Concord, Massachusetts. Homes and haunts of the transcendentalists include the large white house Emerson occupied after renting the Manse to Nathaniel Hawthorne.
- A number of Emerson's works are available through the Web site of the Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia Library.
Essays, First Series, 1841.
