Emerson's Essays and Lectures

Emerson, our most eloquent champion of individualism, acknowledges the countervailing pressures of society in American life. In his works, he dramatizes and records the vicissitudes of what he calls "the great and crescive self." This collection includes his indispensable and renowned works, such as "The American Scholar," which Oliver Wendell Holmes called "our intellectual Declaration of Independence," as well as the "The Divinity School Address," which was considered atheistic by many listeners, the summons to "Self-Reliance," and the more embattled realizations of "Circles" and "Experience." Additionally, the collection features his wide-ranging portraits of Montaigne, Shakespeare, and other "representative men," along with astute observations on the habits, lives, and prospects of the English and American people.

The volume includes Emerson’s well-known "Nature; Addresses, and Lectures" (1849), as well as his "Essays: First Series" (1841) and "Essays: Second Series" (1844), plus "Representative Men" (1850), "English Traits" (1856), and his later book of essays, "The Conduct of Life" (1860). These works established Emerson’s colossal reputation in America and found him admirers abroad as diverse as Carlyle, Nietzsche, and Proust. The reasons for Emerson’s influence and durability will be obvious to any reader who follows the exhilarating, exploratory movements of his mind in this uniquely full gathering of his work. Not merely another selection of his essays, this volume includes all his major books in their rich entirety. No other volume conveys so comprehensively the exhilaration and exploratory energy of perhaps America’s greatest writer.

The Library of America is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve the nation’s literary heritage by publishing and keeping permanently in print America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

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