Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) born in Boston in 1803, the son of a Unitarian minister who died when Emerson was 8 years old; family was left to charity of the church mother kept boardinghouse to put her sons through Harvard studied theology and graduated from Harvard in 1821 (35 th in a class of 59) was ordained a pastor in 1829 influenced by German philosophers and faith in Christianity began to waver resigned from his church in 1831 after abandoning belief in the Lord’s Supper wife, Ellen, died from tuberculosis at age 19, allowing Emerson to travel, write and lecture first son, Waldo died in 1842 at age of 5; Emerson never fully recovered arguably the most influential writer of the 19 th century writings focused on non-conformity, self-reliance and anti-institutionalism other works: Nature, The American Scholar, Representative Men, The Conduct of Life died on April 27, 1882; buried in Concord’s Sleepy Hollow Cemetery Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance (1844)