Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882), who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, minister, abolitionist, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and critical thinking, as well as a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society and conformity. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche thought he was "the most gifted of the Americans", and Walt Whitman called Emerson his "master". Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, Nature. His speech "The American Scholar", given in 1837, was called America's "intellectual Declaration of Independence" by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures, and then revised them for print. His first two collections of essays, Essays: First Series (1841) and Essays: Second Series (1844), represent the core of his thinking. They include the well-known essays "Self-Reliance", "The Over-Soul", "Circles", "The Poet", and "Experience". Together with "Nature", these essays made the mid-1830s to the mid-1840s Emerson's most fertile period. Emerson wrote on a number of subjects, never espousing fixed philosophical tenets. He instead developed ideas such as individuality, freedom, the ability for mankind to achieve almost anything, and the relationship between the soul and the surrounding world. Emerson's conception of "nature" was more philosophical than naturalistic: "Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul." He was one of several major figures who "took a more pantheist or pandeist approach, by rejecting views of God as separate from the world". Emerson remains among the linchpins of the American romantic movement, and his work has greatly influenced the thinkers, writers, and poets that followed him. "In all my lectures," he wrote, "I have taught one doctrine, namely, the infinitude of the private man." Emerson is also well-known as a mentor and close friend of his fellow transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau.
Early life, family, and education Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on May 25, 1803, to Ruth Haskins and the Rev. William Emerson, a Unitarian minister. He was named after his mother's brother Ralph and his father's great-grandmother, Rebecca Waldo. He was the second of five sons who survived into adulthood; the others were William, Edward, Robert Bulkeley, and Charles. Three other children—Phoebe, John Clarke, and Mary Caroline—died in childhood. Emerson was of English ancestry, and his family had lived in New England since the early colonial period, with Ralph Waldo being a seventh-generation descendant of Mayflower voyagers John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley through their daughter Hope. Emerson's father died from stomach cancer on May 12, 1811, less than two weeks before young Ralph's eighth birthday. He was raised by his mother, with the help of the other women in the family. His aunt, Mary Moody Emerson, in particular, had a profound effect on him. She lived with the family on and off, and maintained a constant correspondence with Emerson until her death in 1863. Emerson's formal schooling began at the Boston Latin School in 1812, when he was nine years old. In October 1817, at age 14, Emerson entered Harvard College, where he was appointed freshman messenger for the college president, requiring him to fetch delinquent students and deliver messages to faculty. Midway through his junior year, Emerson began keeping a list of books he had read and started a journal in a series of notebooks that would be called "Wide World". He took outside jobs to cover his school expenses, including as a waiter for the Junior Commons and as an occasional teacher working with his uncle Samuel and aunt Sarah Ripley in Waltham, Massachusetts. By his senior year at Harvard, Emerson decided to go by his middle name, Waldo. He served as Class Poet, and as was the custom, he presented an original poem on Harvard's Class Day, a month before his official graduation on August 29, 1821, when he was 18. He did not stand out as a student, graduating in the exact middle of his class of 59 students. In the early 1820s, Emerson worked as a teacher at the School for Young Ladies (which was run by his brother William). He next spent two years living in a cabin in the Canterbury section of Roxbury, Massachusetts, where he wrote and studied nature. In his honor, this area is now called Schoolmaster Hill in Boston's Franklin Park. In 1826, faced with poor health, Emerson left Massachusetts to seek a warmer climate. He first went to Charleston, South Carolina, but found the weather was still too cold. He then journeyed further south to St. Augustine, Florida, where he took long walks on the beach and began writing poetry. In St. Augustine Emerson made the acquaintance of Achille Murat, a nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, who was two years his senior. Murat and Emerson enjoyed each other's company and became good friends. The two engaged in enlightening discussions of religion, society, philosophy, and government, and Emerson considered Murat an important figure in his intellectual development. While in St. Augustine, Emerson had his first encounter with the slave trade. At one point, he attended a meeting of the Bible Society while a slave auction was taking place in the yard outside. Writing of the incident, he remarked, "One ear therefore heard the glad tidings of great joy, whilst the other was regaled with 'Going, gentlemen, going!'"
Early career
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