Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American writer and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. Emerson was seen as the leading figure of individualism and he gave over 1,500 lectures across the United States in his lifetime. Emerson’s famous essays Nature and Self-Reliance were very influential and are still widely read by scholars today. Nature, published in 1836, is an essay that laid out the foundation of transcendentalism. The essay was Emerson’s attempt to get people to appreciate the beauty of nature.