Ralph Waldo Emerson was a poet based in Concord, Massachusetts. From childhood, he was influenced heavily by Puritan and Anglican ideals and writers such as Ralph Cudworth, Robert Leighton, Jeremy Taylor, and Samuel Tayler Coleridge. His talent for writing was first recognized as a child in school. He then went on to become an ordained Unitarian preacher, but, questioning the faith, resigned a few years later. He believed humanity had a divine connection to nature and could transcend the materialistic world, forming a group known as Transcendentalists. He published Nature anonymously in 1836 helping to begin Transcendentalism. He was influenced in his life and writing by a variety of sources in Transcendentalism such as Hinduism, European Romantic writers, and Neoplatonist philosophy.
Information from The Encyclopedia Britannica.