Ralph Waldo Emerson
/ˌrælf ˌwɔːldəʊ ˈeməsən/
/ˌrælf ˌwɔːldəʊ ˈemərsən/
- (1803-82) a US writer of essays and poems. He greatly influenced religion and philosophy, especially with his idea of Transcendentalism, which said that God's nature was in every person and thing. After being a Unitarian minister (= church leader) in New England, he settled in 1834 in Concord, Massachusetts, where he worked closely with Henry David Thoreau and others. Emerson's essay Nature (1836) explained Transcendentalism as the unity of nature.