Essays: First and Second Series (VINTAGE BOOKS/THE LIBRARY OF AMERICA) - Softcover

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0679726128 ISBN 13: 9780679726128

Publisher: Vintage Books, 1990

Synopsis

Our most eloquent champion of individualism, Emerson acknowledges at the same time the countervailing pressures of society in American life. Even as he extols what he called "the great and crescive self," he dramatizes and records its vicissitudes. Here is a collection of his classic essays, including the exhortation to "Self-Reliance" and the embattled realizations of "Circles" and "Experience." Here, too, are his wide-ranging discourses on history, art, politics, nature, friendship, love, and much more.

For the first time, the authoritative editions of works by major American novelists, poets, scholars, and essayists collected in the hardcover volumes of The Library of America are being published singly in a series of handsome and durable paperback books. A distinguished author has contributed an introduction for each volume, which also includes a detailed chronology of the author's life and career, an essay on the choice of the text, and notes.

About this title

About the Author

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States. 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". Following this groundbreaking work, he gave a speech entitled "The American Scholar" in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. considered to be America's "intellectual Declaration of Independence".

Synopsis

A collection of 20 essays by Emerson including Self-Reliance, The Over-Soul, Experience, and Nature.

Edition details

• Publisher: Vintage Books
• Publication date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679726128
• ISBN 13: 9780679726128
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 397