Biographies
An Index of Notable Authors
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American author, poet, and philosopher. 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 essay Nature (1836). In 1805, Emerson's father called his two-year-old son "a rather dull scholar", and sent him to Boston Latin School. In 1811, less than two weeks short of Emerson's eighth birthday, his father died. In October 1817, at the age of 14, Emerson went to Harvard University and was appointed President's Freshman, a position which gave him a room free of charge. He waited at Commons, which reduced 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 vacations at his Uncle Ripley's school in Waltham, Massachusetts. After Emerson graduated from Harvard in 1821, 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 Gttingen 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 at the age of 19 of tuberculosis in April 1831. Ralph Waldo 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. In 183233, Emerson toured Europe, a trip that he would later write about in English Traits (1856). During this trip, he met William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Stuart Mill, and Thomas Carlyle. Emerson maintained a correspondence with Carlyle until the latter's death in 1881.
