Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston to the Rev. William Emerson, a Unitarian minister in a famous line of ministers. He gradually drifted from the doctrines of his peers, then formulated and first expressed the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his essay Nature (1837).

Emerson's father, who called his son "a rather dull scholar", died in 1811, less than two weeks short of Emerson's 8th birthday. The young Emerson was subsequently sent to the Boston Latin School in 1812 at the age of nine. In October 1817, at the age of 14, Emerson went to Harvard College and was appointed Freshman's President, a position which gave him a room free of charge. He waited at Commons, reducing the cost of his board to one quarter, and he received a scholarship. To complement his meager salary, he tutored and taught during the winter vacation at his Uncle Ripley's school in Waltham, Massachusetts.
 

After Emerson graduated from Harvard in 1821, he assisted his brother in a school for young ladies established in their mother's house, after he had established his own school in Chelmsford; when his brother went to Göttingen to study divinity, Emerson took charge of the school. Over the next several years, Emerson made his living as a schoolmaster, then went to Harvard Divinity School, and emerged as a Unitarian minister in 1829. A dispute with church officials over the administration of the Communion service, and misgivings about public prayer led to his resignation in 1832.

His first wife, Ellen Louisa Tucker, died of tuberculosis at the age of 20 on February 8, 1831.

Ralph Waldo Emerson is distantly related to Charles Wesley Emerson, founder and namesake of Emerson College. Both were Unitarian ministers; Charles was a family name in Ralph Waldo Emerson's family. Their great ancestor, Thomas Emerson, immigrant, settled as early as 1640 in Ipswich, Massachusetts, and was the progenitor of a family of ministers and learned men.

In 1832–33, Emerson toured Europe, a trip that he would later write about in English Traits (1856). During this trip, he met William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Stuart Mill, and Thomas Carlyle. Emerson maintained a correspondence with Carlyle until the latter's death in 1881. He served as Carlyle's agent in the U.S.

His travels abroad brought him not only to England as he also visited France (in 1848), Italy, and the Middle East.

In 1835, Emerson bought a house on the Cambridge Turnpike, in Concord, Massachusetts. He quickly became one of the leading citizens in the town. He also married his second wife Lydia Jackson there. He called her Lidian and she called him Mr. Emerson. Their children were Waldo, Ellen, Edith and Edward Waldo Emerson. Ellen was named for his first wife, at the suggestion of Lidian.

Emerson's work includes:

1836. Nature.
1837. "The American Scholar". An address to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard.
1838. "The Divinity School Address".
1841. Essays: First Series; includes "Compensation", "Self-Reliance", and "Circles".
1841. The Transcendentalist
1844. Essays: Second Series; includes "The Poet", "Experience", and "Politics".
1850. Representative Men; on Plato, Swedenborg, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Napoleon, and Goethe.
'1856. English Traits.
1860. The Conduct of Life; includes "Fate" and "Power".
1862. "Thoreau"; a eulogy for Henry David Thoreau.
1870. Society and Solitude.
Emerson's poetry includes:

Collections:
Poems (1847)
May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)
Selected Poems (1876)
Poems:
"Threnody"
"Uriel"
"Brahma"
"Works and Days"
"Concord Hymn" (origin of the phrase "Shot heard 'round the world")