Ralph Waldo Emerson was born on May 25, 1803, in Boston, Massachusetts. Like his father before him, he became a minister in 1826 and was ordained to the Unitarian church in 1829. He also married in 1829. His wife died of tuberculosis just two years later, and his grief over her death, as well as a crisis of faith he was experiencing, caused him to resign his ministry position.

Emerson turned to writing and became the foremost figure of his literary group, which became known as the American Transcendentalists. Their shared belief was that each person could move beyond (transcend) the world of the senses into a spiritual experience. Rather than God being distant and unknowable, this group believed he could be understood and known through introspection and a connection with nature.

Emerson published many works, including two volumes of essays in the 1840s, The Conduct of Life in 1860, and Society and Solitude, as well as a poetry collection, Parnassus, in the 1870s. He was a strong advocate for the abolition of slavery.

Emerson died on April 27, 1882, having strongly influenced other writers such as Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman.