Ralph Waldo Emerson was a leader of Transcendentalism which was a literary and philosophical movement that began in the United States in 1836. Transcendentalists did not agree with the strict ritualism of established religious institutions. They supported individualism and self- examination. They believed that they could understand themselves better if they study nature and their surroundings. Transcendentalists also believed in an "Over-Soul" where all forms of being are united spiritually. Emerson's lectures and writing were based …showed first 75 words of 1117 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1117 total…forgot what he had written in his work and he could not remember the names of his old friends. Emerson died of pneumonia in Concord on April 27, 1882. He was seventy- eight years old. Emerson is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery next to Henry David Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne, two writers who he had influenced. (Gay 254) After his death, his Edward Emerson and Waldo Emerson Forbes edited and published his journals in ten volumes in 1909. (Richardson)