Emerson’s World

Well read, well traveled, and well respected, Ralph Waldo Emerson shaped his enduring philosophy in a world enriched by books, travel, nature, the people in his life, and those whose lives he studied.

Emerson was a voracious reader of biography, philosophy, history, literature and poetry. He studied the work of Hindu mystics and on tours of Europe and the British Isles met Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, John Stuart Mill, and Thomas Carlyle. He stayed abreast of the scientific discoveries, new technology, and political upheavals of the age and traveled often to speaking engagements across the United States, giving up to 80 lectures a year on a wide range of subjects.

An early member of Boston’s Saturday Club and a founding member of what became known as the Transcendental Club, Emerson’s social circle included many of the mid-19th century’s leading thinkers and doers. While lecture tours and other literary obligations often took him away for weeks at a time, he preferred being home in Concord and always returned to his family with joy and relief.

Emerson was an attentive and kind father and active member of the Concord community, where he and his wife Lidian frequently entertained neighbors and friends that included Henry David Thoreau, the Alcotts, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. When not reading or writing in his study, Emerson would turn to his orchard or the surrounding woods, fields, and riverbanks as his other “workplace,” his daily rambles through Concord’s natural beauty often accompanied by a friend or his children.