On April 19, 1882, Emerson went walking despite having an apparent cold
and was caught in a sudden rain shower. Two days later, he was diagnosed
with pneumonia.
(May
25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was an American essayist, philosopher, and
poet, best remembered for leading the Transcendentalist movement of the
mid 19th century. His teachings directly influenced the growing New
Thought movement of the mid 1800s. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society.
Emerson
gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his
contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of
Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay, Nature. As a result of this ground breaking work he gave a speech entitled The American Scholar in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
