Ralph Waldo Emerson outstanding as the best of Emerson's essays, which Bloom listed as "Self-Reliance", "Circles", "Experience", and "nearly all of "Conduct of Life"". In his belief that line lengths, rhythms, and phrases are determined by breath, Emerson's poetry foreshadowed the theories of Charles Olson. Collections Individual essays Poems Letters Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts
Arthur Helps the Bath in 1871 and a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in the following year. He died of pleurisy on 7 March 1875. His first literary effort, "Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd" (1835), was a series of aphorisms upon life, character, politics and manners. One of these aphorisms is quoted by John Stuart Mill in On Liberty, Chapter Two: "The Deep slumber of decided opinion." His "Essays written in the Intervals of Business" had appeared in 1841, and his "Claims of Labour, an Essay on the Duties of the Employers to the Employed", in 1844.