The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

January

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind and when the same thought occurs in another man, it is the key to that era.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Source: Wikimedia

Ralph Waldo Emerson is considered the father of the transcendentalist movement. He was born in the bustling seaport of Boston, Massachusetts, in 1802. His father, a Unitarian minister and learned man, instilled in him an interest in literature from a young age.

Emerson enrolled in Harvard at age 14, where he developed a keen interest in Asian culture, religion, and literature. He continued his study at Harvard Divinity School to become a minister, like his father, and took a post at a Boston church in 1829.

However, when his wife passed away from tuberculosis in 1831, he questioned his faith and decided to move away from the Church. After quitting his job, he left the United States to travel throughout Europe, where he met such literary giants as William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Thomas Carlyle.

Upon his return to the States, he became a public lecturer—a career he would hold for the next 50 years of his life. This is also when he became involved with transcendentalism.

He published Nature, a seminal text of the movement, in 1836, and together with Margaret Fuller founded The Dial, the journal that became the primary vehicle for transcendentalist ...