Born in Boston in 1803 into three generations of Unitarian pastors, Ralph Waldo Emerson appeared, early in his training and interests, to move comfortably in the stream of New England religious liberalism. However, after serving less than two years in the Unitarian pulpit, he abruptly resigned his post in Boston's First Unitarian Church, claiming the necessity to abandon the ministry "in order to be a good minister." Emerson returned to his childhood community of Concord, Massachusetts, where he would reside the remainder of his life.

What prompted the bright young Emerson to abandon the pulpit was a complex of personal and intellectual crises, not the least of which was the sudden death of his wife of only two years. Soul-searching, Emerson traveled across Europe for months afterward, meeting some of the most important intellectuals of the Continent and England, including Landor, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. However, his introduction to Thomas Carlyle, his true contemporary, marked the beginning of a lifelong friendship and an exchange of ideas that came to link European and American transcendentalism. At first a derisive term leveled at some of the Concord writers and their cabal of adherents, "transcendentalism" supported the concept of an organic universe that embraced all humanity in its spiritual quickening, accenting the unique holiness of the moment and the value of the individual, while dismissing claims of the past as the only source of revelation.

Beginning with his first book, "Nature" (1836), Ralph Waldo Emerson grew in stature and acclaim as one of the most respected intellectuals in the United States. Over time, the growing community of celebrants established his reputation as the "Sage of Concord," a sobriquet that he came to wear with a benevolent grace as the most popular figure on the American lecture circuit. With his New England contemporaries, Orestes Brownson, Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott, Louisa May Alcott, Henry David Thoreau, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emerson established Concord, Massachusetts, as the nexus of American intellectual life during the 1830's and '40's.

The period was marked with a flurry of activities and experiments. Emerson succeeded Margaret Fuller as the editor of the transcendentalist periodical, The Dial, while Fuller and the Alcotts established Brook Farm, a short-lived socialist commune, where they attempted to implement the lofty idealism of their philosophies.

Emerson declined to join them in their communal demonstration in deference to other intellectual pursuits. Instead, he was formulating a theory of an informing spirit and a mystical foundation of nature that he articulated eloquently and forcefully in his distinguished monograph, "Nature" (1844). Emerson's colleagues immediately recognized its seminal genius, and he became something of a spokesperson, after the appearance of the essay, for the Concord group and the New England transcendentalists, in general. His illuminating expositions on the mystical relationship between the "soul" and the "divine mind" marked a break with Unitarianism. With its embrace of Eastern mysticism that emphasized the sacred relationship of all things, American transcendentalism broke with the formalism of all institutional religion. Such rarified union was a concept more fully expressed in the perplexing (and at first unnumbered) pages of Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass," whom the renowned Emerson, upon first reading, greeted "at the beginning of a great career."

In the latter portion of his career, he turned some of his attention to national politics and social reform. He was encouraged by fellow transcendentalists to become active in the abolition movement and was particularly incensed over the passage of the Compromise of 1850, which included a provision requiring citizens of free states to return fugitive slaves to their "masters." He wrote in his journal (spring 1851) of his anger over this law, and in a speech given in New York in 1854 he noted that, while "I do not often speak on public questions. They are too often odious and hurtful; and it seems like meddling and a leaving of work peculiar to the scholar, . . . a new bill was passed, which . . . required me to hunt slaves. . . ." He also advocated disobedience to this law. But his concern over abolition, unlike that of other Transcendentalists (for example, Henry David Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, and Elizabeth Peabody), was never robust.

In the 1870's Emerson's great mind declined, along with his health, and he died quietly at home in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1882.