Self Reliance

Emerson was an American public figure and intellectual throughout much of the 19th century. He helped launch the transcendentalist movement in the United States and define its central tenets.

Emerson grew up in Massachusetts and attended Harvard University and Harvard Divinity School. He became a Unitarian minister like his father but left the clergy after just a few years of practice. His training in theology and history would continue to inform his writing and scholarship, though he would reimagine the value of both the past and organized religion. Throughout his prolific writing career, he published dozens of essays that the public considered radical and revolutionary. A few of his essays, including “Self-Reliance,” “Nature” (1836), and “The American Scholar” (1837), are foundational transcendentalist texts. Emerson both delivered his essays as public lectures and published them in collections.

In the early 1840s, several writers came together to create The Dial, an American literary and philosophical magazine that featured transcendentalist authors. Emerson was involved in the project from its inception and served as the journal’s second editor. He also exercised a leadership role in the “Transcendental Club,” which included the journal’s regular contributors. These positions catapulted him to status as one of the country’s foremost intellectuals of the time.

The optimism and positivity Emerson expresses about the nature and potential of mankind in his work is standard in transcendentalism. His belief in individualism and the inherent goodness of man coupled with his willingness to criticize society led Emerson to express abolitionist sentiment during the American Civil War. It was also during this period that he most directly engaged in politics and regularly delivered speeches on current issues and controversies (like slavery) rather than more abstract social and cultural philosophy. His engagement with the immorality of slavery did not immediately lead him to entirely reevaluate his commonly-held notions of natural racial hierarchies. This scientific engagement with race theory persisted for decades. By the end of his life, he articulated a belief in the superiority of a distinct American race that would emerge from internal racial struggle and mixing. This activism and theorizing are important pieces of his legacy beyond the immediate scope of his most famous literature.

Emerson gained international fame and traveled abroad to lecture at several points throughout his career. While transcendentalism always centered on New England, international audiences received Emerson with enthusiasm and interest. His influence within transcendentalist circles was profound and his colleagues in the field regarded him as a master of his crafts. In wider literary circles, respected authors such as Herman Melville (Moby Dick) and Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter) challenged Emersonian ideals in their own work, positioning themselves as his opposition. In this way, Emerson’s influence, whether authors embraced or refuted his ideology, permeated much of the most-read American literature of the 19th century.