Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Emerson boys grew up in a house their father's death had emptied. William Emerson, a Unitarian minister, died of stomach cancer on May 12, 1811, less than two weeks before his son turned eight, and the boy was raised by his mother Ruth and by an aunt, Mary Moody Emerson, who kept writing to him until 1863. Waldo, as he preferred to be called, entered Harvard at 14 and graduated in the exact middle of a class of 59. He taught at his brother's school for young ladies, spent two years in a Roxbury cabin reading and watching weather, and was ordained junior pastor at Boston's Second Church on January 11, 1829, at 1,200 dollars a year. The woman he had just married was already dying.

He gave up the pulpit in 1832 over the communion service, sailed for Malta on Christmas Day, and came home with a trade rather than a calling: paid lecturing, on a circuit, for the rest of his working life. Nature appeared in 1836, the Divinity School address followed on July 15, 1838, and the essays turned the argument into ordinary American speech. BriefHistory carries the philosophy and what it did to the country's idea of itself. What follows here is the ledger underneath it.

Ellen Louisa Tucker was 18 when he married her in 1829 and 20 when tuberculosis killed her on February 8, 1831. He walked to her grave in Roxbury every day, and on March 29, 1832 he wrote in his journal, I visited Ellen's tomb and opened the coffin. Her estate then paid for the rest of his life — 11,600 dollars in May 1834 and 11,674.49 more in July 1837, the second pried out of her relatives by a lawsuit. The man who told Americans to stand on themselves stood on an inheritance. He was slower on the other question. A journal entry from 1822 rates African men below the sagacity of the elephant, and he did not commit to abolition until 1844. Scholars including Peter Field argue that his racial theories held him back.

The memory went first. Aphasia set in by the spring of 1872, and before the decade was out he was losing his own name and answering questions about his health with, quite well, I have lost my mental faculties. Fire gutted the Concord house on July 24, 1872. Friends raised the money to rebuild it and sent him to Europe and Egypt while the work went on. Pneumonia killed him on April 27, 1882, and he was buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in a white robe from Daniel Chester French. The reputation then went dark from 1914 until about 1965, carried through by poets while T. S. Eliot called the essays an encumbrance.

Ralph Waldo Emerson's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Nature book
  Published anonymously, and the starting point of the movement 1836
• The American Scholar speech
  The Phi Beta Kappa oration at Harvard 1837
• Divinity School Address speech
  Denounced as atheism. He made no reply and left the defense to others 1838
• Essays: First Series book
  Contains Self-Reliance, Circles and The Over-Soul 1841
• Essays: Second Series book
  Contains Experience, written out of the death of his son 1844
• The Conduct of Life book
  His seventh collection, written in the shadow of secession 1860

• May 12, 1811 aged 7 His father dies of stomach cancer weeks before his eighth birthday His aunt Mary Moody Emerson took over much of his education and wrote to him for the next 50 years.
• August 29, 1821 aged 18 Graduates from Harvard in the exact middle of a class of 59 He was 18, and he was poor.
• January 11, 1829 aged 25 Ordained junior pastor at Boston's Second Church The salary was 1,200 dollars a year, rising to 1,400 that July.
• February 8, 1831 aged 27 Ellen dies of tuberculosis at 20 Her last words were, I have not forgotten the peace and joy.
• March 29, 1832 aged 28 Writes in his journal that he opened his wife's coffin He resigned the pulpit later that year and sailed for Malta on Christmas Day.
• July 15, 1838 aged 35 Delivers the Divinity School Address at Harvard He was not invited back to speak there for 30 years.
• January 1842 aged 38 His first son, Waldo, dies of scarlet fever The grief produced the poem Threnody and the essay Experience.
• July 24, 1872 aged 69 Fire guts the Concord house and friends pay to rebuild it He left for Europe and Egypt on October 23 while the work went on.
• April 27, 1882 aged 78 Dies of pneumonia at Concord, six days after diagnosis

• Henry David Thoreau 1817–1862
  Writer and philosopher whose works on nature, individual conscience, and civil disobedience influenced environmentalism and political protest. delivered his eulogy
• Walt Whitman 1819–1892
  Poet whose Leaves of Grass celebrated democracy, nature, and the human body in free verse. called him master
• Herman Melville 1819–1891
  Novelist whose Moby-Dick is considered one of the greatest works of American literature. found a defect in the region of the heart
• William James 1842–1910
  Founded American psychology as a discipline and shaped pragmatist philosophy at Harvard. godfather to him
• John Brown 1800–1859
  Militant abolitionist whose raid on Harpers Ferry sharpened sectional conflict preceding the Civil War. welcomed him to Concord
• Abraham Lincoln 1809–1865
  16th President who preserved the Union during the Civil War and issued the Emancipation Proclamation. met him at the White House in 1862