Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82) was an American essayist, poet, and popular philosopher who began his career as a Unitarian minister in Boston but rose to international prominence as a lecturer and author of essays such as "Self-Reliance," "History," "The Over-Soul," and "Fate." Emerson developed a metaphysics of process, an epistemology of moods, and a "existentialist" ethics of self-improvement based on English and German Romanticism, Neoplatonism, Kantianism, and Hinduism. From his friend Henry David Thoreau to John Dewey, he influenced generations of Americans, and in Europe, Friedrich Nietzsche, who takes up Emersonian themes like power, fate, the uses of poetry and history, and the critique of Christianity. This collection of Emerson’s brilliant essays includes the following: The American Scholar Compensation Self-Reliance Friendship Heroism Manners Gifts Nature Shakspeare; Or, The Poet Prudence Circles