Ralph Waldo Emerson

Boston-born Ralph Waldo Emerson was not an exceptional student at Harvard, but upon graduation, he began developing his own unique writing style as an essayist and poet. Emerson eventually became a leading figure in Transcendentalism, a movement that championed individualism and whose ideas were disseminated in Emerson’s groundbreaking 1836 essay, Nature. Emerson went on to publish several collections of essays, poems, and lectures, including his most notable Essays: First Series and Essays: Second Series. Many of Emerson’s essays were originally written as lectures and later revised for print. Emerson was married twice (his first wife, Ellen Louisa Tucker, died of tuberculosis at age 20) and was best friends with fellow Transcendentalist writer Henry David Thoreau.