Mrs. Nancy Turner
A.P. English
9/18/14
The Sage of Concord Ralph Waldo Emerson was born on May 25, 1803, in Boston, Massachusetts to Ruth Haskins and William Emerson. He was one of the first and possibly most popular transcendental poets. His father, a Unitarian minister, raised him very lovingly but strictly; he died when he was only eight years old. This caused him to grow very close to his mother, siblings, and his aunt, Mary Moody. He began writing journals soon after his father died and later drew from those thought in many of his essays. Emerson studied classics at the Boston Public Latin School and later attended Harvard University and graduated in 1821. He then taught at the Boston School for Young Ladies, run by his …show more content…
He met Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, two poets who shared many similarities to the writing style Emerson possessed. He met philosophers John Stuart Mill and Thomas Carlyle, a man with whom he kept in touch (their writings were eventually published as Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and R.W. Emerson). He later published a book about his travels in Europe by the name of English Traits (Merriman). Upon his return home and move to Concord, Massachusetts, his speaking career began with his giving lectures on ethical living and spiritual experience (biography.com). He then married his second wife, Lydia, and fathered his four children. He befriended a circle of writers that included Margret Fuller, Thoreau, and Amos Alcott; they gave him his nickname “The Sage of Concord.” Thoreau became one of his closest friends. He built a house on his lake and looked after his family when he was on abroad lectures …show more content…
I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.