Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism.

The transcendentalists believe in the inherent goodness of both people and nature. They further believe that society and its institutions—particularly organized religion and political parties—corrupt the purity of the individual. They have faith that people are at their best when truly "self-reliant" and independent.

Emerson wrote most of his important essays as lectures first, then revised them for print. His first two collections of essays – Essays: First Series and Essays: Second Series, published respectively in 1841 and 1844 – represent the core of his thinking, and include such well-known essays as Self-Reliance, The Over-Soul, Circles, The Poet and Experience. Together with Nature, these essays made the decade from the mid-1830s to the mid-1840s Emerson's most fertile period.

The collection:

•Nature
•The American Scholar
•The Conduct of Life
•English Traits

Essays - First Series
•History
•Self-Reliance
•Compensation
•Spiritual Laws
•Love
•Friendship
•Prudence
•Heroism
•The Over-Soul
•Circles
•Intellect
•Art

Essays - Second Series
•The Poet
•Experience
•Character
•Manners
•Gifts
•Nature
•Politics
•Nonimalist and Realist
•New England Reformers

Representative Men
•Plato; or, the Philosopher
•Plato; New Readings
•Swedenborg; or, the Mystic
•Montaigne; or, the Skeptic
•Shakspeare; or, the Poet
•Napoleon; or, the Man of the World
•Goethe; or, the Writer

Poems
•May-Day And Other Pieces
•Elements And Mottoes
•Quatrains And Translations