A classic collection of critical essays, poems, and letters from one of the greatest minds of nineteenth-century America.

Essayist, lecturer, poet, and America’s first “public intellectual,” Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) is the central figure in nineteenth-century American letters and the leader (albeit reluctantly) of the Transcendental group. A literary mover and shaker, Emerson directed his unpopular early radicalism toward social institutions (the Church, education, literary conventions); by his death in 1882, however, his reputation was already solidifying as a national icon. Somewhere between the iconic sage and the speculative idealist lies an Emerson that students don’t often encounter, a flesh-and-blood figure whose writings testify to his continuing exploration of the individual’s place in an increasingly conformist and crowded world. In its selections and its apparatus, this Broadview edition bridges the gap between Emerson and students by stressing his real-world engagements. The collection contains a range of prose and poetry addressing some of Emerson’s major concerns—nature and the self, imagination and the poet, religion and social reform—as he explores the enduring question “How shall I live?” Historical appendices include primary materials on Transcendentalism; the contemporary debate about the nature of biblical miracles; other authors’ responses to Emerson as a writer and thinker; and the development of his complex reputation as a representative American. Copy-texts in this edition are the first published versions of each text, restored here as Emerson’s initial audience would have read them.

Introduction by Mary Oliver Commentary by Henry James, Robert Frost, Matthew Arnold, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Henry David Thoreau The definitive collection of Emerson’s major speeches, essays, and poetry, The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson chronicles the life’s work of a true “American Scholar.” As one of the architects of the transcendentalist movement, Emerson embraced a philosophy that championed the individual, emphasized independent thought, and prized “the splendid labyrinth of one’s own perceptions.” More than any writer of his time, he forged a style distinct from his European predecessors and embodied and defined what it meant to be an American. Matthew Arnold called Emerson’s essays “the most important work done in prose.” INCLUDES A MODERN LIBRARY READING GROUP GUIDE