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The central figure in a group of nineteenth-century Boston
thinkers known as the Transcendentalists, Emerson was the
son of a Unitarian minister who died when Emerson was eight
years old. His mother ran boardinghouses to put her sons though
school: Emerson graduated from Harvard in 1821, and then,
after studying theology, he was ordained a pastor in 1829.
Though he enjoyed delivering sermons, Emerson's faith in Christianity
began to waver as he came under the influence of German philosophers
and the British Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge; after
he lost belief in the rites of the Last Supper, he resigned
from his church in 1831. His wife, Ellen Tucker, died tragically
young from tuberculosis, leaving Emerson a legacy that allowed
him to spend the rest of his life traveling, lecturing, and
writing. Nature (1836), a major contribution to American
Romanticism and Transcendentalism, appeared anonymously and
was favorably received among his friends. Not until the publication
of Essays (1841) was Emerson confirmed as a dominant
presence in American letters. To this day, his influence on
American writers, from Dreiser to Frost to Stevens to Ammons
and on, is undeniable.
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