Rebel Writers
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Write Life, now formally known as Rebel Writers, is back!
If you’ve been subscribing to A Busy Lady for a while, then you remember our adventure last year discovering historic author homes. From Twain to Alcott to Kipling, I took you along with me on a journey so inspiring; I ended up writing an entire book on it.
Well, it’s time to get started on Volume 2! I’m so excited and have so many fabulous writers in store. Emerson, Thoreau, Wharton, Dickinson and more to come. We’ll begin to discover how these writers shaped literature, and what we can learn from them as we pursue on our own creative paths. Of course, if you want the whole story, you’ll need to wait for Volume 2 slated to come out this coming November (so long as I get the novel I’m writing right now done first!)
So, who will we start with? Ralph Waldo Emerson, of course!
So, here we go . . .
Ralph Waldo Emerson was born on May 25, 1803, in Boston, Massachusetts and died on April 27, 1882 in Concord, Massachusetts.
Emerson an American lecturer, poet, essayist. He was also the leader of New England Transcendentalism, a 19th-century philosophical, religious and political movement. We could write an entire essay here on Transcendentalism, as it is not simple to define. In short, it was a movement which took its name from the German philosopher Kant. In fact, even at the time, there were significant differences of focus and interpretation among transcendentalists themselves, complicating the movement as a whole. Henry David Thoreau famously pointed out the difficulty in understanding the movement in a well-known journal entry on March 5, 1853, in which he stated,
“The secretary of the Association for the Advancement of Science requests me . . . to fill the blank against certain questions, among which the most important one was what branch of science I was specially interested in . . . I felt that it would be to make myself the laughing-stock of the scientific community to describe to them that branch of science which specially interests me, inasmuch as they do not believe in a science which deals with the higher law. So I was obliged to speak to their condition and describe to them that poor part of me which alone they can understand. The fact is, I am a mystic, a transcendentalist, and a natural philosopher to boot. Now that I think of it, I should have told them at once that I was a transcendentalist. That would have been the shortest way of telling them that they would not understand my explanations.”
Still, I’ll do my best to give a simple definition of the movement here. Essentially, transcendentalism is a philosophy that emphasizes intuition and spirituality. The best way to understand it is to start by reading Emerson’s own essay, The Transcendentalist, here.
Emerson’s home, photo courtesy of my iPhone.
I visited Emerson’s home in Concord, Massachusetts, on a steamy August day in 2024. Ironically, he was my last stop on my mini tour of Concord, where I’d already been to Thoreau’s woods, Alcott’s home and the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery where authors such as Thoreau, Hawthorne, Alcott, Emerson and more are buried on Author’s Ridge.
Here are some key facts I learned about Emerson on this journey.
1. Emerson’s father, Reverend William Emerson, was a prominent Unitarian minister that also organized meetings in which he brought together open-minded people from a variety of backgrounds to discuss philosophy, science and books (which I suppose is where Emerson gets it!). Sadly, William died when Ralph Waldo Emerson was just 7 years old of either stomach cancer or tuberculosis. He was then raised by his mother, Ruth, his aunts and five of his siblings (two others, a brother and sister, died previously very young).
2. Emerson studied at the Boston Latin School and then began college at Harvard at age 14. This was a common occurrence at the time. At Harvard, he not only studied geometry, physics, history, philosophy, Latin and Greek, but he also showed promise for writing. He was chosen to write and deliver a poem for Harvard’s Class Day, which was a pre-graduation event. Now, despite the fact that Emerson wasn’t the first student chosen for this gig (other students turned it down), fate would have it that he would be the one to deliver the poem. Imagine traveling back in time to see that?
3. Emerson promoted the education of young women. His older brother, William, ran a school for girls in their mother’s Boston home. Upon graduating Harvard, Emerson taught young women at his brother’s school. When his brother left for Germany, Emerson ran the school himself. It is said that he also often lent Louisa May Alcott books from his library during his time in Concord.
4. Emerson moved on from teaching when he enrolled at the Harvard Divinity School, deciding to become a minister to follow in his father’s (and grandfather’s) footsteps. Despite struggling with vision issues at the time and failing to graduate, he still became licensed to preach in 1826. He later left ministry and became a full-time lecturer as he began to disagree with the church’s methods, famously quoting,
“I have sometimes thought that, in order to be a good minister, it was necessary to leave the ministry.”
He had begun to question the church’s methods after the death of his wife, which brings us to number 5.
5. Emerson’s first wife, Ellen Louis Tucker, died in 1831, just four years after the two met on Christmas Day. She was only 20 years old when she passed with tuberculosis. Emerson was deeply sorrowed by her death. He did later remarry in 1835 to Lydia Jackson, and in fact, named his daughter after Ellen to honor his first wife. It is said that Emerson also kept his first wife’s rocking chair to remind himself of his love for her.
Emerson’s backyard, photo courtesy of my iPhone.
There is so much more to Emerson . . . which I will delve into in Rebel Writers: The Genius Behind the Pen Volume II. Emerson inspired a boatload of writers, including Thoreau, Alcott, Whitman, and more. In fact, Mark Twain has an Emerson quote inscribed on his fireplace at the Twain House:
“The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.”
In Rebel Writers, I always share key reflections at the end of each chapter on what we can, as artists and individuals take away from each historic writer.
For Emerson, the key story that stood out for me on my visit to his home was that of his house fire on July 24, 1872.
Side view of Emerson’s home, courtesy of my iPhone.
The guide explained that Emerson woke that morning to the sound of a crackling noise. Quickly, he realized through a crack in the wall that his home was on fire. Both he and his wife tried unsuccessfully to put the fire out. When they failed, Emerson ran to his front gate and yelled to his neighbors, “Fire! Whitcomb! Staples! Fire!”
All of Emerson’s papers, books, artwork, family furniture, and clothes were on the lower floors. But . . . these items were saved because within minutes, there were ten men and more to the rescue, not just trying to put the fire out, but going into the house to remove Emerson’s items to save them. In fact, Louis May Alcott collected his letters herself to save them from the flames.
I think this is a testament to what Emerson, his works and ideas meant to those around them. They cherished him, his family, and his words so much that they would risk going into a burning house to save his family’s heirlooms and his written work.
Emerson was reportedly very kind, as he often let Thoreau stay at his home and he often tucked $20 bills under candlesticks to help Louisa May Alcott’s family pay for their home.
Thus, despite having a rather traumatic life himself with the loss of his father and wife at young ages, he took his pain and turned it around into an aspiring movement to help and inspire others.
I can’t wait to delve more into this in Rebel Writer’s Volume II!
Till then, I’ll leave you with this Emerson quote:
“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”
Till Next Time,
Sarah
AKA A Busy Lady
P.S. I have some exciting news! I was recently chosen by Indie Bookstore Folklore and Fable Booksellers as their Indie Spotlight for the month of March! I love supporting indie bookstores and can’t wait to do a signing at this bookstore in a few weeks.
P.P.S. I am also excited to announce that I will be attending Bookstock in Vermont this May! Bookstock is a three day literary event that has hosted more than 400 authors, 75 poets, including Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winners, sold more than 70,000 used books under a huge tent on the Village Green, and has been attended by tens of thousands. I will be there with my novel, All These Threads of Time, as well as Rebel Writers Volume 1. I can’t wait!
© 2025 WHATS GOIN ON?! SLN Publishing LLC, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
A Busy Lady is written by an actual human—no AI, just chocolate, creativity, and a love for storytelling. This also means there may be an occasional typo, just to prove a human did it ;)