Ralph Waldo Emerson: Poems and Works by the Famous Author

The nineteenth century American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in 1803 in Boston, Massachusetts. His mother was Ruth Haskins, and his father was a Unitarian minister named Reverend William Emerson. He started at the Boston Latin School when he was nine and went to Harvard College just five years later. After his father passed away prior to his eighteenth birthday, Emerson spent his time with his mother and his aunt, Mary Moody Emerson.

Emerson married his first wife, Ellen Louisa Tucker, when she turned eighteen. Ellen Tucker passed away just two years later. He became an ordained junior pastor at Boston’s Second Church but eventually left the ministry because he disagreed with its teachings about God. He traveled to Europe and England and met Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and Thomas Carlyle along the way.

When Emerson returned to the New England area, he fell in love with and married Lydia Jackson. They had four children: Waldo, Edith, Edward Waldo, and Ellen (named for Emerson’s first wife). Edward Waldo Emerson grew up to become a writer and a physician. Emerson died in 1882 in Concord, Massachusetts.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was a proponent of transcendentalism, a philosophical movement that encouraged self-reliance, an appreciation for nature, and everyday spirituality. Emerson was one of the founding members of the Transcendental Club, a group of transcendentalists that would eventually include such other writers as Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau (author of Walden), Bronson Alcott, and William Henry Channing. Emerson also gave lectures and wrote essays about transcendentalism, traveling across New England to do so. In 1840, the Transcendental Club established a journal named The Dial, which published writings by William Ellery Channing in addition to Thoreau.

Ralph Waldo Emerson traveled in literary circles. He met his European counterparts, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and Thomas Carlyle on a trip overseas but had many literary friends who were Americans as well. He met writers in New York, and he famously allowed Henry David Thoreau to build a home near his property, Walden Pond. He also knew Nathaniel Hawthorne, but they did not like each other. Emerson gave lectures at places like Harvard University, and after the Civil War, he eulogized President Abraham Lincoln.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was a famous author in the United States and beyond, and collections of Emerson poems and essays continue to influence writers today. These are just some of his works:

1. 1. Divinity School Address (1838): Emerson gave this speech in 1838 to the graduating class of Harvard Divinity School. Emerson was previously a Unitarian minister but spoke to the crowd about transcendentalism and its benefits.
2. 2. “Concord Hymn” (1838): Emerson performed this poem in Concord, Massachusetts, when a monument to the Battle of Concord received its dedication.
3. 3. Essays: First Series (1841): This book focuses on transcendental thinking and the transcendentalist movement.
4. 4. “Self-Reliance” (1841): One of the essays contained in Essays: First Series, “Self-Reliance,” focuses on individualism within the transcendentalist framework and is a foundational writing in this particular area of philosophy.
5. 5. Essays: Second Series (1844): Following up his first collection of essays, this book furthers Emerson’s work as a transcendental writer and thinker.
6. 6. “Uriel” (1847): This poem is about Uriel, an archangel in Christianity.
7. 7. English Traits (1856): This collection of essays reflects on Emerson’s trips to Europe and England.
8. 8. “Brahma” (1857): This poem broke conventional poetry forms of the time by using an utterance as its basis.
9. 9. The Conduct of Life (1860): This collection contains nine poems followed by nine essays, all focused on the theme “How shall I live?”

Ralph Waldo Emerson was very quotable. Since his time, authors have referenced his various speeches; his works The Lord’s Supper, Essays: First Series, Montaigne; Or, The Skeptic and other prose; his poems “The Snow-Storm,” “Napoleon; Man of the World,” and “The Rhodora” and other lyrical writings; and even text from his letters to Walt Whitman. Here are some of Emerson’s more popular quotes and writings:

• The American Scholar (1837): In this speech at Harvard College, Emerson said: “This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.”
• The Over-Soul (1841): In this essay about the human soul, the author wrote: “That which we are, we shall teach, not voluntarily, but involuntarily. Thoughts come into our minds by avenues which we never left open, and thoughts go out of our minds through avenues which we never voluntarily opened.”
• “Self-Reliance” (1841): In this essay, which reflects Emerson’s transcendentalist views, he wrote: “Envy is ignorance, imitation is suicide.”
• Representative Men (1850): This collection contains seven lectures Emerson gave between 1845 and 1850. In one, he said, “Every hero becomes a bore at last.”
• Society and Solitude (1870): One of this collection’s twelve essays contains Emerson’s words: “Every man has a history worth knowing, if he could tell it, or if we could draw it from him.”
• The Atlantic (1864): When Emerson helped establish the publication in 1857, he and the other co-founders initially called it The Atlantic Monthly. In 1864, he contributed the following in celebration of the 300th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s birth: “Genius is the consoler of our mortal condition, and Shakespeare taught us that the little world of the heart is vaster, deeper, and richer than the spaces of astronomy.”
• “Goethe; Or, The Writer” (1850): In this essay included in Representative Men, Emerson wrote: “Nothing so broad, so subtle, or so dear, but comes therefore commended to his pen, and he will write.”

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