In March 1832, a grieving man opened his young wife's coffin in a Roxbury cemetery more than a year after her death. That man was Ralph Waldo Emerson, and this deep dive replaces the stoic textbook philosopher with the very human, tragedy-stricken figure found in his journals and letters. We follow his early life after his father's death, the influence of his aunt Mary Moody Emerson, an unremarkable Harvard career, a tuberculosis scare, and a formative stay in Florida where he heard a slave auction outside a Bible Society meeting.

We trace his resignation from the pulpit, the scientific epiphany in the Paris botanical gardens that seeded transcendentalism, his invention of the independent lecturer career, and the 1838 Divinity School address that got him banned from Harvard for decades. We also explore the Transcendental Club, his mentorshi ...