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.