“Goodbye” Ralph Waldo Emerson – Died 27 April 1882

Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was an American writer, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century.

One of his early notable works was his 1836 essay, Nature. Following this work, he gave a speech entitled “The American Scholar” in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. considered to be America’s “Intellectual Declaration of Independence”.

His first two collections of essays –Essays: First Series and Essays: Second Series, published respectively in 1841 and 1844  include such well-known essays as Self-Reliance, The Over-Soul, Circles, The Poet and Experience. Together with Nature, these essays made the decade from the mid-1830’s to the mid-1840’s Emerson’s most prolific period.