Author Research Paper Rough Draft: Ralph Waldo Emerson

Maria Rivell

Mrs. Backer

American Literature

March 23, 2017

Author Research Paper Rough Draft: Ralph Waldo Emerson Throughout the United States, many influential American authors have came and gone leaving an impact on literature. Ralph Waldo Emerson happened to be one of those amazing writers. He changed the writing community with the invention of Transcendentalism. This new idea helped Emerson encrypt his opinions and ideas about every topic into his journals, poetry, and works. His best literary work was poetry and most of his readers enjoyed it, too. Emerson loved to go out into the world to try new activities especially poetry: “Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will not grow” (Ralph Waldo Emerson

He preferred to be called by his middle name Waldo, rather than by his first name. He grew up in a family of 8 brothers and sisters: William, Edward, Robert, Charles, Phebe, John, and Mary. Sadly only four of the eight siblings, including Emerson, survived past childhood. He grew up fatherless. His father died of stomach cancer when Emerson was just 8 years old (Shmoop Editorial Team). When his father passed away his Aunt Mary Emerson came to support the family and help take care of the children. Emerson wrote poems as a child and by the age of nine he had composed some verses about the Sabbath (Angyal). Emerson attended Boston Latin School for both grammar and high school. Being an excellent scholar, he was accepted into Harvard University at the age of 14. Because of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s early start on education and competence, he started his career path to be a writer from a young

His best poetry had two qualities: organic form and vernacular style. His less famous poems differed from his best poems; they were too cryptic and diffuse. The poem “Hamatreya” contains an attack on Yankee land-greed and acquisitiveness, cast as a Hindu meditation on the impermanence of all corporeal things. Emerson “[t]hought of himself especially as a poet; in his essays and lectures. He was mainly interested in poetry throughout his life” (Angyal). Because he was a scholar, critic, and poet, he was the first to define distinctive qualities of American verse.

Emerson’s health declined around the year 1867. He had begun to suffer from aphasia, which is the loss of ability to understand or express speech, and had trouble with his memory. In 1872, when the family’s home was burned and damaged by a fire, they set sail for a trip to Europe and Egypt. One night he was walking in the rain on a cold night and became drenched. He became ill with pneumonia and passed away eight days later on April 27, 1882. Emerson was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts