Ralph Waldo Emerson

Returning to American in 1834, Emerson began a new career as a lecturer. The past few years had proved to be a roller-coaster of emotional events: the untimely deaths of his brothers Edward (1834) and Charles (1836); his remarriage to Lydia (whom he renamed Lidian ) Jackson of Plymouth and their settling comfortably in a new home in Concord, MA (1835); the birth of their children-- son Waldo in 1836, Ellen in 1838, Edith in 1841, and Edward in 1844; and the publication of Emerson's first major essay, Nature (1836).



Emerson was a committed Abolitionist, a champion of the Native Americans, a tireless crusader for peace and social justice, a supporter of educational reform, as well as a selfless champion of other creative geniuses around him--(his letter endorsing Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass hailed the younger poet as "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed").



With Margaret Fuller he founded THE DIAL, which published Transcendentalist literature from 1840-1844, and in the years between 1837-1844 he published his most famous works, The American Scholar, The Divinity School Address, and two volumes of Essays (1841 & 1845), which contained the influential pieces Self-Reliance, The Poet, Friendship, and The Over-Soul, being an outline of the foundations of Transcendentalism.



In 1842 Waldo,their eldest son died, followed by the birth in 1844 of their son Edward, and shortly afterwards in 1847 Emerson again went abroad, this time to England and to France, while Thoreau remained in Concord watching over his family. One by one throughout the remaining three and a half decades of his productive, life in which he lectured extensively and continued to write seven more major works, Emerson faced the departure with stoic faith of : his mother in 1853; his brother Bulkeley in 1859; his comrade Thoreau in 1862; his Aunt Mary Moody, who had been a profound influence on his moral and intellectual life from childhood, in 1863; his brother William in 1868.

The last blow came in 1872, when the house where he and Lidian had lived for thirty-seven years burned. To relieve his depression, Emerson's friends arranged for him to travel abroad in 1873, while they raised the funds and oversaw the rebuilding of the house and the reconstruction of his library--a gift they presented to the speechless poet upon his return in 1873. There he lived quietly until his death at 79, struggling with a waning memory, but persevering with his daughters' help, in editing his papers and publishing his last two volumes, Parnassus and Letters and Special Aims.



Waldo Emerson was truly the centre of the American transcendental movement, setting out most of its ideas and values in a book, Nature, www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/emerson/nature.html published in 1836, this represented at least ten years of intense study in philosophy, religion, and literature, and in his First Series of essays.



On April 27, 1882, Emerson died of pneumonia, caught some weeks before after a walk in heavy rain through Concord woods. The tiny New England town tolled the bell for each of his years, shrouded itself in black, and prepared for the onslaught of mourners who came from far and near to accompany Emerson to his rest on Poets' Knoll in Sleepy Hollow cemetery.









Thanks to 'I Hear America Singing' for the bio information