Ralph Waldo Emerson Biography and Works.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was an American essayist, lecturer and poet. He 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 the society. He disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States.

In his 1836 essay, Nature, Emerson formulated and expressed the philosophy of Transcendentalism, gradually moving away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries.

Following this ground-breaking work, he gave a speech titled, The American Scholar in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. considered to be America’s ‘Intellectual Declaration of Independence’.

Emerson’s first two collections of essays-Essays: First Series and Essays: Second Series were published respectively in 1841 and 1844. They represent the core of his thinking, and include well-known essays, such as The Over-Soul, Self-Reliance, The Poet, Circles and the Experience.

Emerson wrote on a number of subjects, developing certain ideas such as freedom, individuality, the ability for humankind to realize almost anything and the relationship between the soul and the surrounding world. Emerson’s ‘Nature’ was more philosophical than naturalistic, ‘Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul’.

Trivia

Emerson’s essays remain among the linchpins of American thinking and his work has greatly influenced the thinkers, writers and poets that have followed him.