Ralph Waldo Emerson


"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."

The "sage of Concord" was born May 25, 1803, in Boston, MA . The son of a Congregationalist minister, he attended Harvard Divinity School, became pastor of a Boston church in 1829, experienced doubts about traditional Christian belief, and resigned in 1832, moving to Concord. He spent the next few years studying and traveling in Europe. After visiting a Paris botanical exhibition, Emerson resolved to be, as he termed it, a "naturalist."

When he returned to Concord, he began his career as a lecturer in the country's new lyceum movement. During the late 1830s and early 1840s, Emerson published the works that present his thought at its most idealistic and optimistic. His first published work was Nature (1836), which contains the gist of his transcendental attitude towards the phenomenal world. The doctrines formulated in these works were later expanded and elaborated upon in his Essays (1841) and Essays: Second Series (1844), of which "Self-Reliance," "The Over-Soul," and "The Poet" are among the best known.

Emerson became identified with the Transcendental movement in the 1840s, serving as its spokesperson, and as founder and guiding force of that group's quarterly periodical, The Dial, which introduced the public to the writings of Amos Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, and Henry David Thoreau, a group who shared Emerson's philosophy. It also published Emerson's first poems, including the "Concord Hymn," which celebrates "the shot heard round the world" of the Battle of Concord during the American Revolution.

Emerson's works in the late 1840s chart a steady decline in the author's idealism and give rise to an emerging recognition of mortal limitations. The Conduct of Life (1860) perhaps best expresses his humanistic acquiescence to the reality of worldly circumstances. Other important later works include Representative Men: Seven Lectures (1850), a series of essays on the men who most closely fit Emerson's ideals - including Plato, Napoleon, and Shakespeare - and English Traits (1856), a work hailed by his friend Thomas Carlyle as an accurate portrait of English social manners in the midVictorian era. He spent his last years in Concord, writing little, but recognized throughout America as a philosopher of great stature. He is buried on Author's Ridge in Concord's famous Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

Excerpted from http://www.RWE.org

Ralph Waldo Emerson: Selected Essays, Lectures and Poems By Ralph Waldo Emerson Cover Image
$8.99
ISBN: 9780553213881
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Bantam Classics - September 1st, 1990

The Cambridge Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson (Cambridge Companions to Literature) By Joel Porte (Editor), Saundra Morris (Editor) Cover Image
By Joel Porte (Editor), Saundra Morris (Editor)
$31.99
ISBN: 9780521499460
Availability: usually available in 3-5 business days
(This is a special order book which cannot be returned.)
Published: Cambridge University Press - April 28th, 1999

Emerson's Essays By Ralph Waldo Emerson Cover Image
$16.99
ISBN: 9780060909062
Availability: Special Order - may be out of print
Published: Harper Perennial - July 24th, 1981

Self-Reliance: The Wisdom of Ralph Waldo Emerson as Inspiration for Daily Living By Richard Whelan (Editor) Cover Image
By Richard Whelan (Editor)
$14.99
ISBN: 9780517585122
Availability: Special Order - may be out of print
Published: Harmony - November 5th, 1991

Emerson in His Journals By Ralph Waldo Emerson, Joel Porte (Editor) Cover Image
Email or call for price.
ISBN: 9780674248625
Published: Belknap Press - April 15th, 1984

The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Modern Library Classics) By Ralph Waldo Emerson, Brooks Atkinson (Editor), Mary Oliver (Introduction by) Cover Image
By Ralph Waldo Emerson, Brooks Atkinson (Editor), Mary Oliver (Introduction by)
$24.00
ISBN: 9780679783220
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Modern Library - September 12th, 2000

Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Belknap Press) By Ralph Waldo Emerson Cover Image
$39.00
ISBN: 9780674267206
Availability: usually available in 3-5 business days
Published: Belknap Press - April 2nd, 1987

Mary Moody Emerson and the Origins of Transcendentalism: A Family History By Phyllis Cole Cover Image
Email or call for price.
ISBN: 9780195039498
Published: Oxford University Press, USA - February 26th, 1998

A Historical Guide to Ralph Waldo Emerson (Historical Guides to American Authors) By Joel Myerson (Editor) Cover Image
By Joel Myerson (Editor)
Email or call for price.
ISBN: 9780195120943
Published: Oxford University Press, USA - January 13th, 2000

Understanding Emerson: The American Scholar and His Struggle for Self-Reliance By Kenneth S. Sacks Cover Image
Email or call for price.
ISBN: 9780691099828
Published: Princeton University Press - March 30th, 2003

A seminal figure in American literature and philosophy, Ralph Waldo Emerson is considered the apostle of self-reliance, fully alive within his ideas and disarmingly confident about his innermost thoughts. Yet the circumstances around "The American Scholar" oration -- his first great public address and the most celebrated talk in American academic history -- suggest a different Emerson. In Understanding Emerson, Kenneth Sacks draws on a wealth of contemporary correspondence and diaries, much of it previously unexamined, to reveal a young intellectual struggling to define himself and his principles.


Self-Reliance, and Other Essays By Ralph Waldo Emerson Cover Image
$5.00
ISBN: 9780486277905
Availability: usually available in 3-5 business days
(This is a special order book which cannot be returned.)
Published: Dover Publications - October 13th, 1993

The Selected Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson By Joel Myerson (Editor) Cover Image
By Joel Myerson (Editor)
Email or call for price.
ISBN: 9780231102810
Published: Columbia University Press - September 22nd, 1999

Representative Men: The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Vol IV By Ralph Waldo Emerson, Andrew Delbanco (Introduction by) Cover Image
By Ralph Waldo Emerson, Andrew Delbanco (Introduction by)
Email or call for price.
ISBN: 9780674761056
Published: Belknap Press - February 1st, 1996