Thinker, Writer, Orator

Ralph Waldo Emerson was sixteen years old when he began his first journal, titled The Wide World, on January 25, 1820. He wrote steadily for the next sixty years, producing a prolific body of work including sermons, essays, lectures, poems, and thousands of letters. Many of Emerson’s other writings grew from seeds planted in the journals and notebooks that he so diligently tended to throughout his life.

One of America’s best known thinkers, Emerson led a renaissance in American ideas and ideals in the 19th Century, emphasizing the potential and worth of the individual and the interconnectedness of all life. His essays are considered foundational to American philosophy and literature; his poems—often reflecting his core transcendental beliefs and love of the natural world—influenced many other poets, including Walt Whitman.

The first of Emerson’s essays, “Nature,” was published in 1836. The two-volume collection Essays followed, which included what was to become one of his most famous works, “Self-Reliance.” He was a renowned speaker and his lectures were often published later as essays, among them “The American Scholar” and the collections Representative Men, English Traits, and The Conduct of Life. Emerson’s poem “Concord Hymn”— written to commemorate the battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775 that sparked the American Revolutionary War—is the origin of the famed phrase “shot heard round the world.”

Emerson’s gift for metaphor and exquisite phrasing has made him one of the most quoted people in history. More than 200 years after he first began writing in earnest, his works remain timely and instructive. He challenges us to be true to ourselves; to heed our highest instincts; to act rightly; to strive for broad understanding through study, observation, action and reflection; to persist through adversity; to face the world with courage, civility, humor and humility; to learn from nature. His words still speak to the issues and dilemmas of our personal lives and our troubled times and still stir us to seek out what is true and beautiful in the world.