Ralph Waldo Emerson Biography

Ralph Waldo Emerson biography

Quick Facts

NAME: Ralph Waldo Emerson
OCCUPATION: Philosopher, Journalist, Poet
BIRTH DATE: May 25, 1803
DEATH DATE: April 27, 1882
EDUCATION: Boston Public Latin School, Harvard University, Harvard Divinity School
PLACE OF BIRTH: Boston, Massachusetts
PLACE OF DEATH: Concord, Massachusetts

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Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American Transcendentalist poet, philosopher and essayist during the 19th century. One of his best-known essays is "Self-Reliance.”

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Ralph Waldo Emerson. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 02:11, Jun 19, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/ralph-waldo-emerson-9287153.

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He advocated for the abolition of slavery and continued to lecture across the country throughout the 1860s.

By the 1870s the aging Emerson was known as “the sage of Concord.” Despite his failing health, he continued to write, publishing Society and Solitude in 1870 and a poetry collection titled Parnassus in 1874.

Emerson died on April 27, 1882,

in Concord. His beliefs and his idealism were strong influences on the work of his protégé Henry David Thoreau and his contemporary Walt Whitman, as well as numerous others. His writings are considered major documents of 19th-century American literature, religion and thought.