Born in Boston in 1803; Father Died of Tuberculosis When Emerson Was 8Yrs Old; Mother

-born in Boston in 1803; father died of tuberculosis when Emerson was 8yrs old; mother opened a boarding house to take care of the 6 children

-aunt Mary Moody Emerson helped watch over the children; she was a strict Calvinist who emphasized self-sacrifice

-entered Harvard at 14yrs old; read widely in philosophy and theology

-after graduation he prepared himself for a job at a school run by his uncle, for the Unitarian ministry

-1829: accepted a post at Boston’s SecondChurch at 25yrs old; married a 17 yr old girl, Ellen Tucker, who died of tuberculosis a yr and a half afterwards

-1832:Emerson resigned from the ministry and left for Europe; met Wordsworth and Coleridge

-1833: returned to the US; settled in Concord, Mass. And married Lydia Jackson

-gave lectures and denied the importance of the past: “Let us unfetter ourselves of our historical associations and find a pure standard in the ideas of man.”

-Emerson coined the term “Over-Soul”—individual souls were part of a larger entity

-1837: Speech “The American Scholar” excited students at Harvard who attended ; a year later, he returned to give “The Divinity School Address” (rejected institutional religion in favor of a personal relation with God

-Harvard authorities were so upset by his speech that he was never allowed to speak there again

-Concord, Mass. Became a place for truth-seeking young people who looked to Emerson as their guru

-1842: Emerson’s son, Waldo, died of scarlet fever at 5yrs old; Emerson shrank into an emotional shell from which he never emerged

-in later years, Emerson suffered from a severe loss of memory and had difficulty recalling the simplest words; when he did appear in public, he had to read from notes

-1881: Walt Whitman visited Emerson, invited him to dinner, and noted how silent he was (he sat next to the author of Little Women, Louisa May Alcott)

-six months later, Emerson died (1882)