The World of Ralph Waldo Emerson

1803	Ralph Waldo Emerson is born on May 25 in Boston, the fourth of eight children of William and Ruth Emerson. The United States greatly increases its landholdings with the Louisiana Pur chase.
1804	Nathaniel Hawthorne is born.
1807	Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is born. England bans the slave trade. William Wordsworth’s ode “Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” appears.
1808	The first part of Goethe’s Faust appears.
1809	Edgar Allan Poe is born.
1811	Emerson’s father dies. Ruth Emerson must raise her family on her limited income from taking in boarders. Harriet Beecher Stowe is born.
1812- 1817	Emerson attends Boston Latin School. War with Britain lasts from 1812 to 1814. Henry David Thoreau is born in 1817.
1817- 1821	Emerson attends Harvard College. His earliest surviving jour nals appear during this period; he will keep them continuously until the last years of his life. In 1819 James Russell Lowell, Her man Melville, and Walt Whitman are born. In 1820 the govern ment negotiates the Missouri Compromise, which keeps equal the number of states where slavery is legal and illegal.
1821- 1825	A college graduate, Emerson takes a variety of teaching jobs in and around Boston. In 1822 his first published essay, “Thoughts on the Religion of the Middle Ages,” appears in the Christian Disciple and Theological Review.
1825	Emerson enrolls in Harvard Divinity School but withdraws be cause of eyesight problems and early signs of tuberculosis.
1826	In October the Middlesex Association of Ministers licenses Emerson to preach, and he delivers his first sermon in Waltham, Massachusetts. A month later, again showing signs of tuberculosis, Emerson sails to Charleston, South Carolina, and St. Augustine, Florida, seeking to recover in the warm climate. James Fenimore Cooper publishes The Last of the Mohicans.
1827	Emerson returns to New England, where he preaches in Uni tarian churches in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. He receives his master’s degree from Harvard Divinity School. In De cember he meets Ellen Louisa Tucker while preaching in Concord, New Hampshire.
1829	In January Emerson becomes junior pastor of the Reverend Henry Ware, Jr., at the respected Second Church of Boston, where he is ordained in March; he becomes pastor in July. He marries Ellen Tucker in September.
1830	Emily Dickinson is born.
1831	Ellen Emerson dies, shaking Emerson’s religious faith. Nat Turner leads an insurrection of slaves in Virginia. William Lloyd Garrison begins publishing the anti-slavery magazine the Liberator in Boston.
1832	In late December Emerson resigns as minister and three days later travels to Europe, where he meets writers William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Stuart Mill, and Thomas Carlyle; the relationship with Carlyle, largely main tained via correspondence, will last many years. Louisa May Al cott is born. Goethe dies; the second part of Faust is published posthumously.
1833	Emerson returns to America and begins a career as a lecturer. He gives his first public lecture, “The Uses of Natural History,” in Boston.
1834	Emerson meets Lydia Jackson and receives the first half of an inheritance from the estate of Ellen Emerson. Emerson’s brother Edward dies of tuberculosis. Emerson moves to Con cord, Massachusetts. Coleridge dies.
1835	Emerson and Lydia Jackson become engaged and marry. He be gins his first lecture series, “Biography,” in Boston. Mark Twain is born.
1836	Nature, Emerson’s first book, appears, and the Transcendental Club begins. Lydia gives birth to a son, Waldo. Emerson’s brother Charles dies of tuberculosis in New York City. Davy Crockett is killed at the Alamo.
1837	Emerson delivers his speech “The American Scholar” at Har vard; Oliver Wendell Holmes calls it the declaration of inde pendence of American intellectual life. Emerson receives the second half of his inheritance from the estate of Ellen Emerson.
1838	Emerson delivers “The Divinity School Address” at Harvard, for which the school bans him for what will be twenty-five years.
1839	Lydia gives birth to the couple’s first daughter, Ellen Tucker Emerson. Emerson preaches his last sermon at Concord.
1840	The first issue of the Dial appears, under the editorship of Margaret Fuller.
1841	Emerson’s first series of Essays is published. Brook Farm, an experiment in communal living, is founded near Boston; Emerson declines membership. The Emersons’ second daugh ter, Edith, is born.
1842	Waldo Emerson dies of scarlet fever. Emerson’s deep grief col ors his second series of essays, which he begins to write and compile. Emerson assumes editorship of the Dial. Charles Dickens’s American Notes appears.
1843	Henry James is born.
1844	Emerson’s Essays: Second Series is published. He gives the speech “Emancipation in the British West Indies” at the Con cord Court House. Emerson’s second son, Edward, is born. The Dial ceases publication because of low subscription rates.
1845	Emerson purchases land at Walden Pond. Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven appears.
1846	Poems, Emerson’s first collection of verse, appears. The United States declares war on Mexico.
1847	Emerson takes his second trip to Europe; his lectures in En gland and Scotland are well attended.
1848	Emerson returns to the United States. Advocates of women’s rights convene at Seneca Falls. Gold is discovered in California. The United States defeats Mexico, gaining control of most of the modern Southwest.
1849	Emerson republishes Nature in the collection Nature, Addresses, and Lectures, which includes “The American Scholar” and “The Divinity School Address,” along with other early lectures.
1850	Emerson’s Representative Men is published. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter appears. The second Fugitive Slave Law is enacted, making it illegal to assist escaped slaves. Margaret Fuller dies. When William Wordsworth dies, Alfred, Lord Tennyson succeeds him as poet laureate of England.
1851	Herman Melville publishes Moby-Dick, and James Fenimore Cooper dies.
1852	Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin appears.
1853	Emerson’s mother dies.
1854	Walden: or Life in the Woods, by Henry David Thoreau, is pub lished.
1855	Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha and the first edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass appear.
1856	Emerson’s English Traits is published.
1857	Melville’s The Confidence-Man appears, with what some believe is anti-Emersonian sentiment.
1859	Emerson’s brother Robert dies. Washington Irving dies.
1860	The Conduct of Life is published.
1861	The American Civil War begins.
1862	U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation. Henry David Thoreau dies.
1863	Emerson’s aunt, Mary Moody Emerson, dies.
1864	Nathaniel Hawthorne dies.
1865	The Confederates surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, Vir ginia, ending the American Civil War. Lincoln is assassinated.
1866	Emerson recites to his son his poem Terminus, in which he rec ognizes his declining creative power. Harvard honors Emerson with the Doctor of Laws degree.
1867	May-Day and Other Pieces, Emerson’s second and final collec tion of poems, appears. He lectures in nine western states. Har vard University names him an Overseer of the Corporation.
1868	Louisa May Alcott publishes Little Women. Emerson’s brother William dies in New York City.
1870	Society and Solitude is published. This year and the next Emer son presents at Harvard the lecture series “The Natural History of the Intellect.”
1871	Emerson travels to California by railroad at the urging of his son-in-law, who works in the railroad industry.
1872- 1873	Fire destroys Emerson’s home. During its reconstruction a dev astated Emerson and his daughter Ellen travel to Europe and Egypt. He visits Carlyle for the last time.
1874	Parnassus, an anthology of favorite poems Emerson compiled throughout his lifetime, appears.
1875	James Elliot Cabot, Emerson’s literary executor and future bi ographer, compiles and publishes Letters and Social Aims, the last book by Emerson to be published in his lifetime.
1876- 1881	Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer appears in 1876. Emerson stops making entries to his journal as his mental fac ulties slowly decline. Henry James’s The American, Daisy Miller, and Hawthorne appear.
1882	Barely able to speak, Emerson attends the funeral of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Ralph Waldo Emerson dies on April 27 and is buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord.