In the late 1830s he published Nature and gave two important speeches at Harvard: “The American Scholar,” which Oliver Wendell Holmes called the declaration of independence of American intellectual life, and “The Divinity School Address,” for which Harvard banned him for the next twenty-five years.

In the early 1840s, while serving as editor of the Dial, Emerson published Essays and Essays: Second Series, confirming his reputation as one of the leading spokespersons of the transcendental movement. Although his verse was never as successful as he intended and a lack of organizational sense kept him from compiling a universal philosophic scheme, Emerson produced prodigiously throughout his later years, publishing Representative Men ( 1850), The Conduct of Life ( 1860), Society and Solitude (1870), and two collections of poetry (1846, 1867). He made two more trips to Europe, the second after fire destroyed his longtime home in Concord.

Emerson was a leading thinker, lecturer, and writer during a period when the literary character of the United States was being formed. In his role as spokesman for the American philosophical and ethical movement known as transcendentalism, he gave voice to a belief in the spiritual potential of every man. Ralph Waldo Emerson died quietly on April 27, 1882, and was buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord.

The World of Ralph Waldo Emerson


 1803  Ralph Waldo Emerson is born on May 25 in Boston, the fourth of eight children of William and Ruth Emerson. The United States greatly increases its landholdings with the Louisiana Pur chase. 
 1804  Nathaniel Hawthorne is born. 
 1807  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is born. England bans the slave trade. William Wordsworth’s ode “Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” appears. 
 1808  The first part of Goethe’s Faust  appears.
 1809  Edgar Allan Poe is born. 
 1811  Emerson’s father dies. Ruth Emerson must raise her family on her limited income from taking in boarders. Harriet Beecher Stowe is born. 
 1812- 1817  Emerson attends Boston Latin School. War with Britain lasts from 1812 to 1814. Henry David Thoreau is born in 1817. 
 1817- 1821  Emerson attends Harvard College. His earliest surviving jour nals appear during this period; he will keep them continuously until the last years of his life. In 1819 James Russell Lowell, Her man Melville, and Walt Whitman are born. In 1820 the govern ment negotiates the Missouri Compromise, which keeps equal the number of states where slavery is legal and illegal. 
 1821- 1825  A college graduate, Emerson takes a variety of teaching jobs in and around Boston. In 1822 his first published essay, “Thoughts on the Religion of the Middle Ages,” appears in the Christian Disciple and Theological Review. 
 1825  Emerson enrolls in Harvard Divinity School but withdraws be cause of eyesight problems and early signs of tuberculosis. 
 1826  In October the Middlesex Association of Ministers licenses Emerson to preach, and he delivers his first sermon in Waltham, Massachusetts. A month later, again showing signs of tuberculosis, Emerson sails to Charleston, South Carolina, and St. Augustine, Florida, seeking to recover in the warm climate. James Fenimore Cooper publishes The Last of the Mohicans. 
 1827  Emerson returns to New England, where he preaches in Uni tarian churches in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. He receives his master’s degree from Harvard Divinity School. In De cember he meets Ellen Louisa Tucker while preaching in Concord, New Hampshire. 
 1829  In January Emerson becomes junior pastor of the Reverend Henry Ware, Jr., at the respected Second Church of Boston, where he is ordained in March; he becomes pastor in July. He marries Ellen Tucker in September. 
 1830  Emily Dickinson is born. 
 1831  Ellen Emerson dies, shaking Emerson’s religious faith. Nat Turner leads an insurrection of slaves in Virginia. William Lloyd Garrison begins publishing the anti-slavery magazine the Liberator  in Boston.
 1832  In late December Emerson resigns as minister and three days later travels to Europe, where he meets writers William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Stuart Mill, and Thomas Carlyle; the relationship with Carlyle, largely main tained via correspondence, will last many years. Louisa May Al cott is born. Goethe dies; the second part of Faust  is published posthumously.
 1833  Emerson returns to America and begins a career as a lecturer. He gives his first public lecture, “The Uses of Natural History,” in Boston. 
 1834  Emerson meets Lydia Jackson and receives the first half of an inheritance from the estate of Ellen Emerson. Emerson’s brother Edward dies of tuberculosis. Emerson moves to Con cord, Massachusetts. Coleridge dies. 
 1835  Emerson and Lydia Jackson become engaged and marry.