Ralph Waldo Emerson was one of America’s most influential writers and thinkers. He was a great orator, poet, essayist and philosopher. His writings were greatly influenced by transcendentalism; the belief that there is a spiritual reality beyond the material world that can be reached through intuition, emotion and personal experience.
Emerson believed in the power of the individual and in the importance of living in harmony with nature. He believed that each person had an individual destiny which they could achieve by following their own path. He believed that everyone should follow their own conscience rather than blindly following convention or tradition because this would lead to greater happiness and fulfillment in life.
Writer’s most famous work was his essay Self Reliance which was published in 1841 but written many years earlier when he was only 24 years old. This essay became one of the foundations for transcendentalism as well as influencing writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman who were all influenced by it.
Emerson’s work has greatly influenced American literature and culture, as well as Western philosophy. He is among America’s most influential poets; his work featured in The Norton Anthology of American Literature (2005), as well as many other anthologies. Emerson’s other works include Nature (1836), Compensation (1841), The Over-Soul (1841) and Circles (1850).
