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This 1870 collection of essays was drawn from Emerson's lectures delivered over the previous twelve years. The title essay features Emerson's defense of solitude against the demands of society. Among the other works included are "Civilization," "Art," "Eloquence," "Domestic Life," "Works and Days," and "Old Age."
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This collection of essays, published in 1856, grew out of Emerson's travels in England, undertaken shortly after he resigned his ministry following a loss of faith. An insightful survey of English history and manners, English Traits also features accounts of Emerson's meetings with such luminaries as Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Carlyle.
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Published in 1876, this collection was shepherded into print by Emerson's daughter, Ellen Tucker Emerson, and his friend, James Elliot Cabot, due to Emerson's diminished health. But the essays themselves, especially the masterful "Poetry and the Imagination," a ringing defense of the symbolic power of poetry, belie the notion of any decline.
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American essayist, lecturer, poet, and leader of the Transcendentalist movement, Ralph Waldo Emerson was a champion of individualism and major critic of the prevailing society of his time. Emerson forwarded his ideology by publishing dozens of essays and giving over 1500 lectures in the United States during his lifetime. Emerson's philosophy did not espouse any specific tenets but rather promoted generally the principles of individuality, freedom,...
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In 1834, Emerson, formerly a Unitarian minister, began a new career as a public lecturer. Many of these lectures formed the source material for his essays. Nature (1836), his first published work, contained the essence of his transcendental philosophy, which views the world of natural phenomena as a sort of symbol of the inner life and emphasizes individual freedom and self-reliance. Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson is a collection of twelve of his most...
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During the 1800s in America, the rise of industrialization reduced the cost of goods allowing people to have more possessions than ever before. However, a group known as the Transcendentalists believed that possessions created vanity. Instead, they valued the individual's relationship with divinity. One of the movement's most famous members, Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote prolifically about his beliefs and experiences. A representative selection of his...
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This collection of the first and second series of essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson collects some of the classic thoughts of this important American and leader of the Transcendentalist movement. Contained in this volume are the following essays: History, Self-Reliance, Compensation, Spiritual Laws, Love, Friendship, Prudence, Heroism, The Over-Soul, Circles, Intellect, Art, The Poet, Experience, Character, Manners, Gifts, Nature, Politics, Nominalist...
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He was an ordained minister, renowned orator, and beloved author and poet whose ideas on nature, philosophy, and religion influenced authors such as Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman. Through his writings, Emerson ardently professed the importance of being an individual, resisting the comfort of conformity, and creating an art of living in harmony with nature. This soul-satisfying anthology of twelve favorite essays is a treasure. In the title...
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"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was an American essayist and poet. One of the young nation's first recognized public intellectuals, he championed the writing of Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman and opined on everything from the evils of slavery to the glories of solitude. His essays such as "Self-Reliance" argued for a distinctly American style of philosophical individualism, untethered...
11) Nature
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This version of Nature is an 1843 revision to the popular essay written and published in 1836. In the original essay, Emerson put forth the foundation of transcendentalism, and suggested that reality can be understood by studying nature. Within the essay, Emerson divides nature into four usages: Commodity, Beauty, Language and Discipline. These distinctions define how humans use nature for their basic needs, their desire for delight, their communication...
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The American Scholar was a speech given by Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1837, to the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard College. Emerson argues that American culture, still heavily influenced by Europe, could build a new, distinctly American cultural identity. Emerson uses Transcendentalist and Romantic points of view to explain a true American scholar's relationship to nature. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. declared this speech to be America's Intellectual...
13) Friendship
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Emerson's treatise on the nature of friendship. "The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.
14) Gifts
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In "Gifts" Ralph Waldo Emerson muses on the function of and expectations surrounding the giving of gifs. He touches on what gifts communicate about the nature of the giver and receiver, and how the best kind of gift is a gift of love.
15) Circles
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Circles is an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson, first published in 1841. The essay reflects on the vast array of circles one may find throughout nature and what is suggested by these circles in philosophical terms. In the opening line of the essay Emerson states The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end.
16) Compensation
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Emerson's discourse on "the laws of compensation", takes on the notion that one who has money must be wicked and those who do not must be good, among other topics. It appeared in his book "Essays", first published in 1841.
17) Heroism
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Building on and enriching ideas set forth in "Self-Reliance", Emerson argues that true heroism is self-confidence and persistency in the face of corrosive pressures to conform to society.
18) Prudence
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The essay on "Prudence" was given as a lecture in a course on Human Culture, in the winter of 1837-8. It was published in the first series of Essays, which appeared in 1841. In it, Emerson describes Prudence as "The virtue of the senses" and admits to having little of it in himself.
19) Manners
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In "Manners", Ralph Waldo Emerson expounds on the meaning of customs and politeness in civil society. He argues that the purpose of manners is more to facilitate the creation and proper working of society, and not to establish hierarchies.
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In The Poet, an essay by U.S. writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, the author expresses the need for the United States to have its own new and unique poet to write about the new country's virtues and vices. It is not about men of poetical talents, or of industry and skill in meter, but of the true poet. After reading the essay, Walt Whitman consciously set out to answer Emerson's call. When the 1855 edition of Leaves Of Grass was first published, Whitman sent...
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