<P> Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures first and then revised them for print . His first two collections of essays, Essays: First Series (1841) and Essays: Second Series (1844), represent the core of his thinking . They include the well - known essays "Self - Reliance", "The Over-Soul", "Circles", "The Poet" and "Experience". Together with "Nature", these essays made the decade from the mid-1830s to the mid-1840s Emerson's most fertile period . </P> <P> Emerson wrote on a number of subjects, never espousing fixed philosophical tenets, but developing certain ideas such as individuality, freedom, the ability for mankind to realize almost anything, and the relationship between the soul and the surrounding world . Emerson's "nature" was more philosophical than naturalistic: "Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul". Emerson is one of several figures who "took a more pantheist or pandeist approach by rejecting views of God as separate from the world ." </P> <P> He remains among the linchpins of the American romantic movement, and his work has greatly influenced the thinkers, writers and poets that followed him . When asked to sum up his work, he said his central doctrine was "the infinitude of the private man ." Emerson is also well known as a mentor and friend of Henry David Thoreau, a fellow transcendentalist . </P> <P> Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on May 25, 1803, a son of Ruth Haskins and the Rev. William Emerson, a Unitarian minister . He was named after his mother's brother Ralph and his father's great - grandmother Rebecca Waldo . Ralph Waldo was the second of five sons who survived into adulthood; the others were William, Edward, Robert Bulkeley, and Charles . Three other children--Phebe, John Clarke, and Mary Caroline--died in childhood . Emerson was entirely of English ancestry, and his family had been in New England since the early colonial period . </P>

Walt whitman was inspired by the work of another transcendentalist writer ralph waldo emerson