Ralph Waldo Emerson: Selected Essays, Lectures and Poems [Paperback]

A new, wide-ranging selection of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s most influential writings, this edition captures the essence of American Transcendentalism and illustrates the breadth of one of America’s greatest philosophers and poets.

The writings featured here show Emerson as a protester against social conformity, a lover of nature, an activist for the rights of women and slaves, and a poet of great sensitivity. As explored in this volume, Emersonian thought is a unique blend of belief in individual freedom and in humility before the power of nature. “I become a transparent eyeball,” Emerson wrote in Nature, “I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.” Written over a century ago, this passage is a striking example of the passion and originality of Emerson’s ideas, which continue to serve as a spiritual center and an ideological base for modern thought.Foreword by Robert D. Richardson, Jr.

NATURE (1836)
Introduction
I.----
II.Commodity
III.Beauty
IV.Language
V.Discipline
VI.Idealism
VII.Spirit
VIII.Prospects

EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES
Pray Without Ceasing (1826)
Ethics (1837)
The American Scholar (1837)
Cherokee Letter (1838)
The Divinity School Address (1838)

From ESSAYS, FIRST SERIES (1841)
History
Self-Reliance
The Over-Soul
Circles

From ESSAYS, SECOND SERIES (1844)
The Poet
Experience
Politics

From REPRESENTATIVE MEN (1850)
Uses of Great Men
Montaigne; or, the Skeptic

LATER ESSAYS AND LECTURES
Emancipation in the British West Indies (1844)
Woman (1855)
Thoreau (1862)

POEMS
Concord Hymn
The Rhodora
Each and All
Brahma
Hamatreya
The Snow-storm
The Sphinx
Ode: Inscribed to W.H. Channing
Uriel
Threnody
Blight
Terminus
Poet

Additional ReadingRalph Waldo Emerson (1803 —1882) was a renl£Â