The Transcendent Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson, an American essayist, philosopher, and poet, was one of the most popular thinkers of his time. His radical thoughts led to the establishment and proliferation of the transcendentalism movement in America in the mid-19th century. He dedicated his life writing dozens of essays and holding hundreds of lectures across the States.

Photo by Samuel W. Rowse / Stephen Alonzo Schoff

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1803, Emerson was the second of five sons. After his father died of stomach cancer, his mother raised the children with help from their aunts. Emerson began his education at the Boston Latin School at age nine and entered Harvard College at just 14. While studying, he worked various jobs to support himself and graduated at 18 with a class of 59 students.

After Harvard, Emerson worked with his brother William at a school in Chelmsford, Massachusetts. When William left to study divinity in Germany, Emerson took over as schoolmaster and continued teaching for several years.

A Shift Toward Philosophy and Travel

Due to health issues caused by Boston’s cold climate, Emerson traveled south to South Carolina and Florida. There, he witnessed slavery firsthand at a slave auction outside a Bible Society meeting—an experience that would later influence his views.

In 1829, Emerson became a junior pastor at Second Church in Boston. However, after the death of his first wife, Ellen, he began to question the church’s practices. This led to his resignation in 1832 and a year-long trip to Europe, where he visited Italy, Malta, France, and England. During his travels, he met literary figures such as William Wordsworth, Thomas Carlyle, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Upon returning to the U.S., he began his career as a lecturer. His first lecture, “The Uses of Natural History,” delivered in 1833, became the foundation for his first published essay, Nature.

The Rise of Transcendentalism

Before publishing Nature, Emerson had already begun forming what would become the transcendentalism movement. Early members included George Putnam, Frederic Henry Hedge, and Margaret Fuller. The movement rejected traditional intellectualism and organized religion, emphasizing that people and nature are inherently good and that individuals can form their own beliefs without relying on the past.

In 1837, Emerson gave a lecture series on the philosophy of history at the Masonic Temple in Boston, marking the beginning of his independent lecturing career. He eventually gave up to eighty lectures a year, traveling as far as Idaho, Missouri, and California.

In 1840, the transcendentalist group launched a journal called The Dial, with Margaret Fuller as its first editor. Emerson later took over and used the publication to promote emerging writers like Henry David Thoreau and Ellery Channing. The journal ran until 1844.

Enduring Legacy

Emerson’s second book, Essays (1841), included his well-known essay “Self-Reliance,” which championed individualism and the importance of following one’s own ideas rather than conforming to societal norms.

During the Civil War, Emerson was a vocal abolitionist. He expressed his opposition to slavery in lectures and in his 1860 essay collection The Conduct of Life. Though he supported war as a means of national renewal, his stance against slavery remained firm.

By the late 1860s to the early 1870s, Emerson’s health started to decline, causing him to stop writing in his journals, particularly when his memory started fading. However in 1874, he was able to publish an anthology of poetry, containing works by Lucy Larcom, Jones Very, Henry David Thoreau, and many more. By 1879, his memory had gotten so bad that he stopped appearing in public.

Emerson died on April 27, 1882, following complications due to pneumonia. He is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts. 

Emerson’s legacy transcended his earthly life. He was able to publish dozens of essays, poetry, and speeches—and his large body of work inspired the likes of Walt Whitman, T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. To honor his life and literary impact, The Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize was created, given annually to high school students with exceptional essays on historical subjects.

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