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Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Ralph Waldo Emerson
BornMay 25 1803
Boston, Massachusetts
DiedApril 27 1882
Concord, Massachusetts
Nationality United States
Literary movementTranscendentalism

Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was an American essayist, poet, and leader of the Transcendentalist movement in the early nineteenth century.

Life

The distinguished poet, essayist, and lecturer was born in Boston, Massachusetts. As a child, he experienced illness, poverty, and the death of a parent. His father, a Unitarian minister, died when Emerson was eight years old, and his mother struggled to raise five boys — including a mentally retarded son — alone. With the aid of several grants, however, Emerson was able to enter Harvard College when he was fourteen. To pay for expenses, he worked as a tutor, a messenger, and a waiter at the college. After graduating, Emerson taught several years at his brother's school for girls. He returned to Harvard to study for the ministry and became a Unitarian minister in 1829. His brief career as a minister was marred by religious doubt and by his wife's death in 1831. Because he felt that he could no longer perform certain church rituals in good faith, he resigned his ministry in 1832. After traveling to Europe for a year, Emerson returned to the United States to devote himself to lecturing and writing. In 1835, he remarried and settled in Concord. A year later he celebrated the birth of his first child as well as publication of his first book, Nature. From 1836 through 1838 he served as Minister to the small Unitarian congregation in East Lexington Massachusetts, Follen Church Society. This was his last ministerial position.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston to the Rev. William Emerson, a Unitarian minister in a famous line of ministers. He gradually drifted from the doctrines of his peers, then formulated and first expressed the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, Nature.

Emerson's father, who called his son "a rather dull scholar", died in 1811, less than two weeks short of Emerson's 8th birthday. The young Emerson was subsequently sent to the Boston Latin School in 1812 at the age of nine. In October 1817, at fourteen Emerson went to Harvard College and was appointed Freshman's President, a position which gave him a room free of charge. He waited at Commons, reducing the cost of his board to one quarter, and he received a scholarship. To complement his meager salary, he tutored and taught during the winter vacation at his Uncle Ripley's school in Waltham, Massachusetts.

After Emerson graduated from Harvard in 1821 at the age of eighteen, he assisted his brother in a school for young ladies established in their mother's house, after he had established his own school in Chelmsford; when his brother went to Göttingen to study divinity, Emerson took charge of the school. Over the next several years, Emerson made his living as a schoolmaster, then went to Harvard Divinity School, and emerged as a Unitarian minister in 1829. A dispute with church officials over the administration of the Communion service, and misgivings about public prayer led to his resignation in 1832.

His first wife, Ellen Louisa Tucker, died of tuberculosis at 19 on February 8, 1831. Despite having been married, there has been scholarship suggesting Emerson might be bisexual.[1] During his earlier years at Harvard he found himself 'strangely attracted' to a young freshman named Martin Gay about whom he wrote sexually charged poetry.[2] Gay would only be the first of his infatuations and interests, with Walt Whitman numbered among them.[3]

Emerson is distantly related to Charles Wesley Emerson, founder and namesake of Emerson College. Both were Unitarian ministers; Charles was a family name in Ralph Waldo Emerson's family. Their great ancestor, Thomas Emerson, immigrant, settled as early as 1640 in Ipswich, Massachusetts, and was the progenitor of a family of ministers and learned men.

Emerson toured Europe in Dreni 1832 and later wrote of his travels in English Traits (1856). During this trip, he met William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Stuart Mill, and Thomas Carlyle. Carlyle and Emerson maintained contact a correspondence with Carlyle until the latter's death in 1881. He served as Carlyle's agent in the U.S.

His travels abroad brought him not only to England as he also visited France in 1848, Italy, and the Middle East.

In 1835, Emerson bought a house on the Cambridge and Concord Turnpike in Concord, Massachusetts, now open to the public as the Ralph Waldo Emerson House, and quickly became one of the leading citizens in the town. He also married his second wife Lydia Jackson there. He called her Lydian and she called him Mr. Emerson. Their children were Waldo, Ellen, Edith and Edward Waldo Emerson. Ellen was named for his first wife, at the suggestion of Lydian.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Shand-Tucci, Douglas (2003). The Crimson Letter. New York: St Martens Press. pp. 15–16. ISBN 0-312-19896-5.
  2. ^ Richardson, Jr., Robert D (1995). Emerson: The Mind on Fire. University of California Press. pp. p.9. ISBN 0520206894. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  3. ^ Kaplan, Justin (1980). Walt Whitman, A Life. New York: Simon and Schuster. pp. p.249. ISBN 0060535113. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)

Published as

  • Essays and Lectures: Nature; Addresses, and Lectures; Essays; First and Second Series; Representative Men; English Traits; The Conduct of Life (Joel Porte, ed.) (Library of America, 1983) ISBN 978-0-94045015-8.

Further reading

  • Strunk, William (2006). The Classics of Style. The American Academic Press. ISBN 0-9787282-0-3. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  • Soressi, B. (2004). Ralph Waldo Emerson (in Italian). Armando. ISBN 88-8358-585-2. with preface by A. Ferrara
  • Mariani, G. (2004). Mariani, G.; Di Loreto, S.; Martinez, C.; Scannavini, A.; Tattoni, I.; (ed.). Emerson at 200 Proceedings of the International Bicentennial Conference (Rome, 16-18 October 2003). Aracne. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link)
  • Cavell, S. (2003). Emerson Transcendental Etudes. Stanford UP. ISBN 0-6742672-0-6. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  • Geldard, Richard G. (2001). Spiritual Teachings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Lindisfarne Books. ISBN 0-9402625-9-2. with introduction by Robert Richardson
  • Geldard, Richard G. (2000). The Esoteric Emerson: The Spiritual Teachings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Lindisfarne Books. ISBN 0-9402625-9-2.
  • Richardson, Jr., Robert D. (1995). Emerson: The Mind on Fire. University of California Press. ISBN 0-5202068-9-4.
  • Whicher, Stephen E. (1950). Freedom and Fate. An Inner Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Univ of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0-8122704-5-2. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
  • Thurin, Erik (1981). Emerson As Priest of Pan: A Study in the Metaphysics of Sex. Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas. ISBN 0-7006021-6-X.
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