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Biography of Ralph Waldo EmersonName: Ralph Waldo EmersonBirth Date: May 25, 1803 Death Date: April 27, 1882 Place of Birth: Boston, Massachusetts, United States Nationality: American Gender: Male Occupations: author, minister, activist Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was the most thought-provoking American cultural leader of the mid-19th century. In his unorthodox ideas and actions he represented a minority of Americans, but by the end of his life he was considered a sage.Though Ralph Waldo Emerson's origins were promising, his path to eminence was by no means easy. He was born in Boston on May 25, 1803, of a fairly well-known New England family. His father was a prominent Boston minister. However, young Emerson was only 8 when his father died and left the family to face hard times. The genteel poverty which the Emerson family endured did not prevent it from sending the promising boy to the Boston Latin School, where he received the best basic education of his day. At 14 he enrolled in Harvard College. As a scholarship boy, he studied more and relaxed less than some of his classmates. He won several minor …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…how original in thought; how true in character!" Some of the eulogizing was extravagant, but in general the verdict at the time of Emerson's death has been upheld. Further Reading Emerson's Journals were reedited with care by William Gilman and others (7 vols., 1960-1969). Also valuable are The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, edited by Ralph L. Rusk (6 vols., 1939). The best biography is still Rusk's The Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1949). The best critical study of Emerson's writing is Sherman Paul, Emerson's Angle of Vision: Man and Nature in American Experience (1952), which concentrates on Emerson's principle of "correspondence." Stephen E. Whicher, Freedom and Fate (1953), is also valuable; it is called an "inner life" of Emerson and concentrates on the 1830s. The only treatment of Emerson's mind and art as they relate to the transcendentalist movement is Francis O. Matthiessen's superb American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman (1941). |