Ralph Waldo Emerson "...was truly one of our great geniuses" even though he may have a short biography (Hodgins 212). But as Emerson once said himself, "Great geniuses have the shortest biographies." Emerson was also a major leader of "the philosophical movement of Transcendentalism". (Encarta 1) Transcendentalism was belief in a higher reality than that found everyday life that a human can achieve.
Emerson was born on May 25, 1803 in Boston, Massachusetts. His father died when he was young and his mother was left with him and his four other siblings. At the age of 18 he graduated from Harvard University and was a teacher for three years in Boston. Then in 1825 he entered Harvard Divinity School and preached for three years. At the age of 29 he resigned for ministry, partly because of the death of his wife after only 17 months of marriage.
In 1835 he married Lydia Jackson and started to lecture. Then in 1836, he helped to start the Transcendental Club. The......
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