Ralph Waldo Emerson offers his interpretation of…

Ralph Waldo Emerson offers his interpretation of transcendentalism in his book Nature, in which he demonstrates the organicism of all life and the role of nature as a visible manifestation of invisible spiritual truths.

Emerson has become a leader of the transcendental movement, which questions establish views on literature, philosophy, and religion; he helps to launch the Transcendental Club in 1836.

A former headmaster of a girls’ school and a Harvard graduate with a degree in divinity, he had preached from various Boston pulpits for the few years before 1829, when, at twenty-six, he had been ordained pastor of Boston’s prestigious Second Unitarian Church, marrying Ellen Louisa Tucker in September.

Her death of Emerson’s wife Ellen in February 1831 had thrown him into a religious and personal crisis.

Resigning his pulpit in 1832, he had sailed for Europe, where he had met Wordsworth and Carlyle, forming with the latter what is to be a lifelong friendship, their correspondence influencing one another.

His personal outlook much improved, Emerson had returned to Boston in 1833.

Moving to Concord the following year, he had married Lydia Jackson in 1835 and embarked on a successful career as a lecturer.