Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, speaker, philosopher, abolitionist, and poet who lived from May 25, 1803 to April 27, 1882. He went by his middle name, Waldo. He led the transcendentalist movement in the middle of the 1800s. People looked up to him as a supporter of freedom and critical thinking, as well as a wise critic of how society and conformity can make people feel bad about themselves. He was called "the most gifted of the Americans" by Friedrich Nietzsche, and Walt Whitman called him his "master." Emerson slowly moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his time. In his 1836 essay "Nature," he formulated and explained the theory of transcendentalism. After this, in 1837, he gave a speech called "The American Scholar." Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. thought it was America's "intellectual Declaration of Independence." Emerson was born on May 25, 1803, in Newbury, Massachusetts. His parents were Ruth Haskins and the Rev. William Emerson, who was a Unitarian preacher. He was named for Ralph, his mom brother, and Rebecca Waldo, his dad great-grandmother. William, Edward, Robert Bulkeley, and Charles were the other four sons who lived to adulthood. Ralph Waldo was the second of these boys to do so.
