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Born of a family of ministers, Ralph Waldo Emerson studied at Harvard and became a minister himself in 1829. On his wife’s death (Elena Louisa Tucker), he gave up his ministry and retired peacefully.

In 1832-1833, Emerson undertook a journey across Europe, which inspired him to write English Traits in1856. He then met Wordsworth, Coleridge, John Stuart Mill and Thomas Carlyle, with whom he kept a correspondence until Carlyle’s death in 1881.

On his return, he settled in Massachusetts and became the figurehead of Transcendentalism.

By questioning Christian dogma, Emerson advocated religious anti-conformism based on personal experience and a return to Nature, against the flow of recently industrialized America.

In 1836, he founded the journal The Dial with a few other intellectuals to help propagate the transcendentalist ideas; he also published his first book, Nature, in September of that year.

In 1842, Emerson lost his eldest son, Waldo, from scarlet fever. His pain inspired him to write two major works: the poem Threnody and the essay Experience.

He himself died of pneumonia. He was buried at the cemetery of Sleepy Hollow in Concord.

Ralph Waldo Emerson remains one of the key figures of American culture.