Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) was born in Boston, the son of a Unitarian minister, and was himself ordained before resigning his pulpit in 1832. Nature (1836), the address “The American Scholar” (1837) and the Essays (1841, 1844) made him the central figure of New England transcendentalism and the most influential American thinker of his century. He lived in Concord, Massachusetts, from 1834, lectured widely for forty years, and was the friend and patron of Thoreau.