A Brief Ralph Waldo Emerson Bio

Emerson (Ralph Waldo), American essayist, poet, and philosopher, b. Boston 25 May, 1803. He came of a line of ministers, and was brought up like his father, educated at Harvard College, and ordained as a Unitarian minister, 1829. Becoming too broad for the Church, he resigned in ’32. In the next year he came to Europe, visiting Carlyle. On his return he settled at Concord, giving occasional lectures, most of which have been published. He wrote to the Dial, a transcendentalist paper. Tending to idealistic pantheism, but without systematic philosophy, all his writings are most suggestive, and he is always the champion of mental freedom, self-reliance, and the free pursuit of science. Died at Concord, 27 April, 1882. Matthew Arnold has pronounced his essays “the most important work done in prose” in this century.