Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 - April 27, 1882) is one of the best known American philosophers, best known for leading the Transcendentalist movement of the early 19th century.

After attending Harvard Divinity School, he served as a junior pastor at Boston’s Second Church and was ordained on March 11, 1829. After the death of his first wife in 1831, however, he began to disagree with the church’s methods, eventually resigning in 1832 over “... administration of the Communion service and misgivings about public prayer...”.

After his resignation, he toured Europe, meeting such well known authors as William Woodsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Stuart Mill and, in particular, Thomas Carlyle, who had a strong influence on Emerson and with whom he maintained correspondence until Carlyle’s death in 1881.

In September, 1836, Emerson and a number of other intellectuals founded the “Transcendental. Club” and Emerson anonymously published his first essay “Nature”.  In 1837, he delivered a speech entitled “An Oration, Delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge” which was subsequently renamed “The American Scholar”. This speech urged American’s to create their own unique writing style free from Europe. Through this speech, Emerson declared literary independence in the United States. The speech was considered to be America’s Intellectual Declaration of Independence” by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr..

Emerson’s essay “Compensation” was one of several published in his book “Essays”, published in 1841.  A subsequent book “Essays: Second Series” was published in 1844 and subsequent editions of the first book were re-named “Essays: First Series”.