"Contexts" sheds light on the cultural climate within which American Transcendentalism developed, reproducing writings by Madame de Stael.William Wordsworth, Frederic Henry Hedge, and Sampson Reed. Emerson’s contemporary reception and a variety of responses to him are represented both bv caricatures and by literary impressions from, among others,Henry David Thoreau. Louisa May Alcott. Walt Whitman. Margaret Fuller.George Santayana. D. H. Lawrence. and A. R. Ammons.

At last, a comprehensive collection of Ralph Waldo Emersons writings available in a paperback student edition. This Norton Critical Edition includes a generous selection from Emerson’s sermons, lectures, essays, addresses, and poems as well as essential excerpts from his journals, notebooks, and correspondence. In addition this is the first Emerson anthology to include a substantial portion of Emerson’s contributions to Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.

  "Contexts" sheds light on the cultural climate within which American Transcendentalism developed, reproducing writings by Madame de Stael.William Wordsworth, Frederic Henry Hedge, and Sampson Reed. Emerson’s contemporary reception and a variety of responses to him are represented both bv caricatures and by literary impressions from, among others,Henry David Thoreau. Louisa May Alcott. Walt Whitman. Margaret Fuller.George Santayana. D. H. Lawrence. and A. R. Ammons.

  Fourteen critical interpretations, selected from the many hundreds published in the twentieth century; also appear. O W. Firkins. Stephen E.Whicher, Perry Miller, Joel Porte. Hyatt H. Waggoner, Julie Ellison.Michael T. Gilmore. Barbara Packer. Stanley Cavell. Cornel West. Len Gougeon. Richard Poirier. Robert D. Richardson. Jr., and Saundra Morris offer their assessments of this major American thinker and writer.

 A Chronology, Selected Bibliography, and Index to the poems are also provided.

Preface

Acknowledgments

A Note on the Texts

Abbreviations

The Texts of Emerson’s Prose and Poetry

Sermons

I. [Pray Without Ceasing], 1 Thessalonians 5:17, July 25, 1826

XXXIX. [Summer], Psalms 74:16-17, June 13, 1829

XC. [Trust Yourself], Matthew 16:26, October 3, 1830

CLXII. [The Lord’s Supper], Romans 14:17, September 9, 1832

 Nature

 Selected Early Addresses and Lectures

The American Scholar

An Address Delivered before the Senior Class in Divinity College,

  Cambridge, July 15, 1838

The Method of Nature

The Transcendentalist

 From Essays: First Series

History

Self-Reliance

Compensation

Spiritual Laws

The Over-Soul

Circles

From Essays: Second Series

The Poet

Experience

Politics

New England Reformers

From Representative Men

Montaigne, or the Skeptic

Shakspeare, or the Poet

From The Conduct of Life

Fate

 Power

Illusions

 From Letters and Social Aims

From Poetry and Imagination

Quotation and Originality

 From The Dial

The Editors to the Reader

Thoughts on Modern Literature

 Miscellanies on His Contemporaries and His Times

From An Address . . . on . . . the Emancipation of the

  Negroes in the British West Indies

Address to the Citizens of Concord on the Fugitive Slave Law

From Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli

Thoreau

Abraham Lincoln

From Historic Notes of Life and Letters in New England

 Selected Poetry

FROM POEMS

  The Sphinx

  Each and All

  The Problem

  The Visit

  Uriel

  Hamatreya

  The Rhodora

  The Humble-Bee

  The Snow-Storm

  Fable

  Ode, Inscribed to W. H. Channing

  Give All to Love

  Thine Eyes Still Shined

  Eros

  The Apology

  Merlin, I

  Merlin, II

  Bacchus

  Blight

  Threnody

  Concord Hymn

 FROM MAY-DAY AND OTHER PIECES

  From May-Day

  Brahma

  Nemesis

  Boston Hymn

  Voluntaries

  Days

  The Chartist’s Complaint

The Titmouse

  Sea-Shore

  Two Rivers

……