Ralph Waldo Emerson was a 19th century American essayist, poet and leader in the transcendentalist movement. His teachings directly influenced the growing New Thought movement of the mid 1800s. Emerson published his first essay, Nature, in 1836. After writing this essay Emerson gave a speech entitled The American Scholar in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes called America's "Intellectual Declaration of Independence." Some of his more well-known essays include Nature, Self-Reliance, Compensation, The Over-Soul, The Poet, Experience, and The American Scholar.